Trial continued Tuesday morning in the trial against two of the suspects charged in connection with alleged child abuse at the First United Methodist Church Daycare, as the Commonwealth rested its case in the afternoon.
Multiple witnesses took the stand in the morning, many of which were parents of the alleged victims in the case. They were asked to observe videos of the incidents that led to the 30 counts of criminal child abuse against Allison Simpson and two counts of criminal child abuse against Nina Morgan—one mother called the acts highly inappropriate, saying no one should handle a child the way these women did.
One former daycare worker described the alleged abuses by Simpson as “excessive bouncing” and “excessive patting”, saying the force of the pats often became too strong and the bouncing shook the infants too roughly—Simpson was also accused of roughly pulling and dropping the children. All of the children in the indictments were under the age of 13 months old.
Another woman employed by the daycare at the time described one incident she witnessed where a child’s head was squeezed.
She says she went to both former Pastor Paige Williams and former Daycare Director Abby Leach about the incidents, but nothing ever changed—so she went directly to a parent.
The two other suspects in the case, Williams and Leach are set to be tried in August for their alleged roles in the incidents.
Indictments against Leach and Williams allege they “breached their legal duty to protect the minor children by failing to prevent Simpson and Morgan from intentionally abusing children.”
All 32 counts are alleged to have happened between December 19 of 2018 and January 18 of 2019. Eleven of the counts are against the same infant and a total of eight children are listed as victims in all of the allegations.
The trial now does to the defense and is set to resume Wednesday morning.