A nursery care worker and her daughter were caught on video abusing at least 10 toddlers for months on Tuesday at a nursery in the Western Galilee, N12 reported.
The abuse was caught after a mother installed a camera at the nursery following suspicions she had after she saw signs of abuse on her son, including red marks on his head.After retrieving the recordings, the mother saw that the nursery workers were regularly abusing and assaulting the children, including to her son, which she saw in the videos.
"I heard her beat him," the mother recalled. "It was [so] hard to hear. I was broken."
The mother then turned the evidence over to police investigators, who arrived at the nursery and retrieved additional evidence from the location's security cameras.The children, all under the age of three, were seen being beaten, punched, aggressively shaken and kicked by the nursery workers.
"In the last two weeks I started to see all kinds of signs on my son. [He would wake] up at night, shouting, not sleeping, not responding; he stopped eating."He would always come back from daycare [feeling] sad, [only] wanting to sleep and refusing to play. In the mornings, he did not want to go to the daycare and often stopped talking. At the age of 9 months he spoke well, and now he stopped, because his self-confidence dropped," the mother told N12 news.
Police filed an indictment over the weekend to the nursery's staff, based on the evidence of severe abuse.
"One of the most difficult cases I have encountered as a police officer over 20 years. Cruelty, inconceivable brutality. A very difficult case. This is a case that personally concerns me," said Major Gal Harel, Maalot Police Chief.
The lawyer representing the accused said the accused had confessed to their crimes.