Woman claims boy abused her son at Orlando day care

By Margaret Kavanagh, Reporter

Online article here.

ORLANDO —

A mother claims her son was sexually abused at an Orlando day care center, and now she is suing the facility.

The lawsuit was filed on April 2. It claimed an eight-year-old boy molested a six-year-old boy while under the care of the Kiddie U facility on Wallace Road.

The alleged abuse happened in August 2010. The lawsuit claimed the mother picked her son up and thought something seemed wrong with him. He apparently told her the other boy molested him inside a make-shift fort at the daycare center at least five times.

John Leighton is the lawyer for the mother accusing the day care center of negligence and misrepresentation.

Le”Most parents can`t believe that it would actually occur by another child because in theory these children are being watched and supervised by their caregivers, their teachers,” Leighton said. “This is every parent`s worst nightmare.”

But some parent who bring their children to the city said they don’t believe the allegations. Mezo Riccio said he has been bring his four-year-old son Maximo to the center since he was eight weeks old.

“I feel safe, I definitely wouldn’t take him out of school by any meanings for any reason like that,” Riccio said.

We tried to speak with the owner of Kiddie U. He said he will not play this out in the media and that his lawyers are handling the case. He also said he had no other comments about the case.

“I think it`s a shame that something like this could tarnish a great facility when it`s not necessary,” Riccio said.

According to the school’s website, there are 30 cameras that parents have access to watch their children over the Internet.

“One of the features that my client was promoted when she put her child in day care at Kiddie U had surveillance cameras and apparently my client was told that this room had no cameras,” Leighton said.

He said the alleged victim has been in therapy since the incident occurred. If it wasn’t for the fact that she sensed that something was wrong he probably would have kept this bottled even longer,” Leighton said.

The Orange County Sheriff`s Deputies who responded the day after the alleged abuse was reported wrote an incident report, taking statements from the alleged victim’s mother.

They said they handed the case over to the Department of Children and Families, who did an assessment of the situation, but no further action was taken. DCF officials said there was no sexual abuse investigation because there were two children involved. They said if it was an adult accused of those actions it would be totally different story.