Screenshots from surveillance cameras that allegedly show a Texas preschool teacher manhandling a 4-year-old girl in her care (The Button Law Firm).
A Texas preschool teacher repeatedly “screamed at, belittled and manhandled” a 4-year-old girl in her care — telling her, “Your mommy and daddy … don”t want you” — while threatening to send the youngster “to jail,” a lawsuit says.
“You’re going to be locked in the dungeon,” the teacher said, according to a legal complaint filed by parents Patrick Killingsworth and Mellissa Killingsworth, who claim the educator tormented their daughter while she was attending preschool at Trinity Lutheran School and Early Childhood Center, which is a private school located in San Angelo.
“[The girl] was subjected to continuous yelling, screaming, ridiculing, belittling, shoving, pushing, yanking, dragging, and hitting — changing her forever,” the complaint charges.
The Killingsworths say their daughter was “caught on camera” being dragged across her classroom by the teacher, who is not identified in the complaint, and the educator was also seen “locking her alone in a dark closet,” according to a statement provided to Law&Crime by the parents’ legal team, The Button Law Firm.
“In addition, the lawsuit states the teacher threatened to call the police on the preschooler and told her that her parents wanted her to go to jail,” the statement says. “Every incident was captured on the school’s surveillance cameras.”
According to the complaint, the teacher was caught on video “screaming” at the girl and “belittling” her in front of other kids.
“You are not going to kindergarten,” the teacher allegedly said. “You are a baby! You need help! You can’t do anything!”
The teacher allegedly added, “She got something wrong in her brain. … You even poop all over my bathroom but doesn’t know how to listen to anything! So embarrassing … You are so embarrassing. You are so embarrassing. Everybody look at [the girl], how embarrassing. Aw, so embarrassing. All of your friends are looking at you. Like you are so embarrassing. Get it together.”
The child was seen “crying, asking for her mommy and daddy,” while the teacher continued to “mock her,” according to the complaint. The teacher got one of the kids in her class to join in “on the taunting,” the document alleges.
“You’re gonna get locked in the dungeon!” the student allegedly yelled.
Describing how she was threatening to call the cops on the child and pretending to dial 911 on her cellphone, the teacher allegedly said, “Guess what? I’m going to call the police. And you’re going to go to jail. Yea! You need to get locked up and go far away from your family and from all of your friends and you need to go to jail. You need to go to jail. … You are so bad.”
According to the complaint, the teacher was also caught on camera saying the following:
Oh! Guess what? Your mommy and daddy are so tired of how you act that they don’t want you at home either. They don’t want you. They want you at… they want you to go to jail, too because you don’t listen!
Your mommy and daddy are not at jail. They are not at jail. You won’t ever see them. You’ll be at the jail. Cry about it.
And guess what? Shhhhhh…. Guess what in jail?
You think there are a bunch of little kids like your age in jail?
NO! Guess who they all are?
They’re big grown-up scary people in jail!
And you’re going to be the only teeny tiny little baby in the whole jail!”
The girl’s parents are suing Trinity Lutheran School and its administrators, claiming they “chose not to intervene or preserve” footage of the alleged torment. Text messages cited in the complaint say Trinity Lutheran School’s director and principal received more than four months of “explicit warnings” from the teacher that she was “approaching a mental health breakdown,” including one in which she called a “meltdown at work” her “worst nightmare.”
The school’s response was “to continue having the teacher come into work and sending her back to her classroom — prioritizing staffing over child safety,” according to the parents’ lawyers. School leaders allegedly “failed to intervene at every step, even after the director watched recorded footage of the abuse the day it happened,” the law firm’s statement says.
“Trinity Lutheran School’s leadership ignored state childcare laws and failed to stop a 4-year-old girl and her preschool classmates from being terrorized by a teacher while under the school’s watch,” says daycare injury attorney Russell Button. “This is what happens when a school prioritizes its staffing schedule over a child’s safety, then tries to bury the truth instead of owning up to their multiple failures that broke the law.”
When reached by Law&Crime on Tuesday about the lawsuit, Trinity Lutheran School said its leaders were unavailable to comment.
