This year, instead of the most-read articles of the year, the team have picked their favourites of the 1,500 or so we have published in 2024. They will appear in no particular order until New Year’s Eve. Today’s choice was first published on October 11, 2024.
Warning: Contains obscene language
OVER the summer we set out how the Tories had betrayed families and their children with their relentless push to subsidise non-familial care and punish parents who try to look after their young children themselves. In ‘The Tories and the callous betrayal of babies’ I concluded by saying that the Tories were a danger to babies and young children. I stand by that statement.
In that piece I discussed the tragic case of nine-month-old Genevieve Meehan, who was killed by a worker at Tiny Toes nursery. ‘Kate Roughley who was 37 strapped nine-month-old Genevieve Meehan face down to a beanbag at the Tiny Toes nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, on 9 May 2022.
‘Genevieve was left on the beanbag for 90 minutes and was seen struggling and coughing on CCTV footage. But Roughley did not check on her until she was ‘unresponsive and blue’. Jurors heard Genevieve, the daughter of barrister John Meehan and solicitor Katie Wheeler, died from asphyxiation . . .’ Lord have mercy.
Unsurprisingly, this was not the only abuse of babies going on at Tiny Toes nursery. The killing of Genevieve resulted in another prosecution after police watched at hours of CCTV footage from the ‘baby room’.
The Guardian reported: ‘Footage of Gregory showed her “verbally abusing and mishandling the children, pushing a child’s head down, roughly placing a child on the floor and threatening to kick a child in the head”.’ Threatening to kick a young child in the head. That’s nice.
‘On one occasion she swaddled a child so tightly that he couldn’t move. Seeing the child was visibly distressed, she forced his head down, preventing him from moving,’ the force said. ‘On another occasion she swaddled a child tightly, telling him to “fucking go home”.’
Rebecca Gregory, 25, who had worked at the nursery for seven years, did not have a trial. She pleaded guilty to four counts of wilfully assaulting, ill-treating, neglecting, abandoning or exposing a child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering and was sentenced to three years in jail. As usual she will be entitled to be released at the halfway point and put on licence.
So this is what was going on in one of the many thousands of places where parents have to leave their children while they are at work. Some of these poor infants are in these ‘baby rooms’ for up to ten hours a day, 40 hours a week. This is Modern Britain, after all. Such progress!
This isn’t normal, and no amount of lecturing me to get with the times will ever make me accept that it is normal. At least this father in a piece from 2017 (which probably would not be printed now) accepted that very long hours of childcare for very young children ‘feels like child abuse’. And that’s without the actual child abuse.
It’s not that I want to scare parents. I just want them to be aware of what they are getting themselves into. I’ve used nursery care myself although only when the children were older and for short hours in a day. What annoys me is how mothers on parenting forums are always told their babies will be ‘fine in nursery’. Why do you think that? Do you honestly believe that?
If a mother says something feels ‘off’ about a nursery, this can be dismissed. I say trust your instincts, or what’s left of them once the feminists have got hold of them. If something feels off, something is off. If you don’t like the look of the nursery worker, judge that book by its cover, and change the nursery. Go with your maternal instinct to protect your child and remove your child if necessary.
I have also come to believe that who will look after the baby should be the number one concern of young people when looking for a spouse. I can only guess what people look for in a spouse these days, but once upon a time it was not a crazy idea to consider how your potential wife might cope as mother or potential husband act as a father.
I’d like to believe that this is at least a factor when a man marries a woman – that he is thinking ‘this woman will make a good mother, she will be kind, caring, compassionate and sensible’. (My favourite line from a TV adaptation of Emma is Knightley scolding Emma that men do not want silly wives.)
However, if your firstborn is heading to some dreadful baby room, even if you do manage to marry that kind and caring woman you are ambushed with the bait and switch. Because the husband doesn’t get his loving wife looking after their tiny baby and tending to its every need. She isn’t the one gently rocking junior to sleep in the safety of your one-bedroom flat.
No, the husband gets Rebecca Gregory attacking his child in the ‘baby room’ of some awful nursery. He has to deal with a nursery worker whom he knows nothing about, perhaps (we hope these are rare circumstances) swaddling his child and when the child is visibly upset forcing his head down and threatening to kick him in the head. Is this really what you signed up for? Is this what you had in mind when you proposed?
I think this is worth discussing before couples walk down the aisle. It might also be worth considering whether it’s a good use of money to blow £25,000 on a wedding (the UK average in 2024 including ring and honeymoon) and goodness knows what on some hideous hen and stag. This hard-earned cash could be used to buffer a loss of income and help your wife to stay at home should junior come along. So the person looking after your firstborn is actually your loving wife and not the nursery worker you have never met in your life. If you can spare your infant a stay in the ‘baby room’, I’d call that a win.
This bait and switch between the mother you want and carer you get happens in Ireland also. In 2013 there was outrage when an undercover investigation by the state broadcaster uncovered abuse in a nursery. ‘Secretly recorded footage at three crèches in Dublin and Wicklow showed childcare staff manhandling children, screaming at them and snatching toys from their hands. Some of the footage . . . showed toddlers strapped in highchairs for hours on end without anything to stimulate them and childcare staff fabricating diaries relating to the children’s activities.’ I watched the documentary at the time and it was deeply depressing.
There is an ongoing investigation into abuse at another creche in Dublin this year. The allegations include ‘slapping of children’s heads; hitting children’s legs; forcing children roughly into high-chairs, force-feeding a child with sensory issues until they vomited; repeatedly calling one child “fatty”; wiping children’s noses forcefully to the point they fell backwards and hurt their heads; getting children to call other children “arsehole”; speaking in disparaging terms about parents in front of their children; and being generally “cold” with the children.’
I think that’s about as much as I can take for now.
