Phases of the Moon Pt. 3
According to Police reports, the Nanny reported to have yelled at the seven-year old girls
in the Memorial Park bathroom as described in our first story, has been identified. Sources say the family that employed her has fired her.
A lawyer for the family that employed the Nanny contacted theLoop and requested we remove the photograph of the young child in a photograph with that Nanny in a subsequent report. Although not legally required to do so, we did.
An e-mail was then sent to the lawyer to facilitate a friendly meeting between Pam Sullivan, the mother who witnessed the incident, her husband J. Mark Lane, and the family employing the Nanny. That request was declined by their attorney,
Camille Joseph Kassar, of a firm in Chatham, New Jersey.
Sullivan says , “My primary motive in writing my story was to relate what happened in the hope that the family would learn of the incident and deal with their nanny. Secondarily, I hoped that other mothers who employ caregivers would also take heed and make an effort to investigate how their caregivers behave when they think no one is watching.”
If you get our Friday Loop Scoops , we wrote this on 8/14:
- who cares for our children?
- is there underlying racism or elitism among some of us?
- are we litigation happy?
- when both parents work, why are they often criticized?
- when should town employees intervene?
an incident a local mother was never meant to witness becomes
a passion play in the ‘burbs.
we still think it’s an important conversation.
note: comments are extensive for these posts:
I do not condone the nannies actions if they occured as written, but for this to be posted after the PD was called their twice in an hour determining nothing arrestable had occured leaves me to wonder why you posted this in the first place. And then to post the picture of the nanny and the child seems to be a little over the top.
I would not conclude that the PD have “determined nothing arrestable occurred.” That process may not be quite over yet.
Posting the pic of the nanny holding the poor child (another victim of the nanny’s bizarre conduct) was not only totally lawful, but assisted in identifying the parties involved and facilitating communications among them. The pic was removed immediately once that was done. And by the way, I am optimistic that there were valid (unrelated) reasons why my call was not returned, and I have reason to believe that situation will be corrected soon.
My suggestion is people would be best withholding judgment until this process has worked its way through to some resolution. The Loop is doing what it should be doing — reporting on the status.
[quote][i]It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.[/i] – Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson[/quote]
BOGO, it is through the right of freedom of the press (although the physical printing press is giving way to newer forms of journalism unimagined at the time of our Constitution) that this issue is brought to the community’s attention and you can comment on it. It is perhaps the ‘Fourth Estate’ that really provides the ‘checks and balances” of government and the people that government is supposed to serve.
Let’s learn as much truth as we can about the incident and the other issues that have been raised during the course of the discussion of the incident. It is our best path to justice and improvement.
Give it a rest. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. If my kids made a mess I would want them to clean it up. If an adult I didn’t know scolded them and made the correct the actions, I would thank that person not smear their face all over the internet.
There is one point that baffles me about this whole situation. Why wasn’t the childrens mother with them at the park instead of the nanny? Does she have a job or did she have a tennis lesson? It’s amazing to me how many people have multiple children just to have a stranger watching their kids while they are off to the beauty salon. The nannies wouldn’t have any influence if Larchmont moms would just start raising their own children.
The elitism of some of these comments is really boorish. As a matter of fact, the child’s mother — my wife — does have a job. She works for a Supreme Court Justice, and has 50 times the intelligence (and integrity) of some of the lightweights who seem to frequent “local discussion boards.”
You know, many families these days have two working parents. For some, it’s a necessity. For others, it’s a choice. I don’t care which it is, I respect it either way. As Hillary Clinton once said, in a comment that endeared her to me forever, “I guess I could have stayed home and baked cookies.” … And for all you moms that made that choice, I respect that, too. Odd how it doesn’t seem to cut both ways, eh?
On top of that, what makes all you anonymous people so knowledgeable that you can say that the people we working parents leave our children with are “strangers”? Good grief. The woman who harassed my children and assaulted my wife was a stranger. The people who take care of my children are not. What about you? Are you a stranger? If so, perhaps we should get to know each other? Whaddaya say?
TWO THINGS THAT BAFFLES ME, 1; IF THE MOTHER WAS SO SCARED FOR HER SELF AND HER KIDS, WHY DID SHE LEAVE THEM IN THE PARK KNOWING THAT THE NANNY WAS STILL THERE AND 2; WHY WERE THE COPS CALLED THE SECOND TIME AND WHO CALLED THEM?
Looks like I struck a nerve. Was your wife actually working that day? I understand your position as my wife works as well. However, when she OR I had the day off, we were with our children.
i am guessing since the mom works part time and the nanny probably doesn’t drive, she ran to the grocery store, the drug store, the bank, the post office, the dry cleaner, got school forms to the doctor and put gas in the car. i guess you never have to do any of these things, carl.
Of course my wife and I do all of those things….we just take our kids with us while we are doing them. This make come as a shock to you, but it is possible for both parents to work, have children and not have a nanny.
editrix: if i may interject here..carl…we respect your choices but i am not sure it is relevant to the conversation. the events are alleged to have occurred. let’s focus on that instead of whether it’s a crime to have nanny in the first place, which many people, myself included, either do or did.
I’m not suggesting there is anything wrong with having a nanny. My point is that if you choose to let someone else watch your children, you get what you get. Choosing to relinquish control is just that….a choice, which may or may not have consequences.
Have any of the nannies involved in this incident lost their jobs? Is the nanny who forced the children to clean the floor still employed by the same family? If so, I find that stunning. I say that as a mother who has stayed home and had a part-time caregiver and as a mother who now works full-time out of necessity. I also think that the vitriol addressed to working parents and/or non-working parents who emply caregivers is unnecessary and non-productive. Any caregiver who would behave as these nannies did should not be trusted to take care of children. There are plenty of caregivers who would never engage in this type of behavior.
Jeez
Lets stop the Working Mother vs Non Working Mother.
Lets stop the I have a Nanny vs I don’t have a Nanny.
Looks like people are deviating from the main purpose of the article. I don’t care who has an au pair, nanny, babysitter and so forth. What I care about are the children. If I see something wrong, unjust or children being abused, I am the type of person that will do something about it, even if it causes me to get a tongue lashing from a non working mother, working mother, nanny, babysitter or au pair, etc………you get the point . Lets protect the children and stop attacking each other. We are all good parents who love our children and want whats best for them.
I think this is a good opportunity for everyone to take a step back and think about the fact that there are two sides to this situation. This is by no means condoning what may very well have been an error in judgment by the nanny. However, I find the fact that the conversation has devolved into criticizing people who employ nannies as well as the nannies themselves is a problem. In many families, both parents do have to work and do not have access to family members to help pitch in, something what used to happen commonly, but now with a more mobile society, does not. In addition some moms who don’t work outside the home, but who have several children do need assistance, once again that help may have been provided in previous decades by extended family. I think where the conversation can begin is with a discussion about increasing the standards/credentials and quality of the providers we hire for our children–that there should be more stringent requirements, licensing, etc. Most studies indicate that the most important factor is quality of day care not whether or not there is day care.
At the end of the day, can we ask ourselves what was accomplished by making a personal matter between 2 families public? Did it just serve to erode race and class relations among us? Did we make parents distrustful of all caregivers and conversely make caregivers afraid to speak to parents? We stirred up resentment between working moms versus non-working moms. We live in a small village. It would not have taken Detective Columbo to find the identity of the family that employed the nanny in question. Did we need to post her image as well as the child’s on the Internet? Couldn’t this all have been dealt with privately?
Just yesterday, a little boy hit my son repeatedly at Memorial Park while his mother talked aimlessly on the phone. Previously, my nanny would have pointed it out to the mother, but in this new world, she just took my son and left the park. She said, “I did not want to end up arrested or on the Internet.†Is this not a sad state of affairs we’ve created?
editrix: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Please understand that our editorial policy, and that of most well-regarded media, dictates that a suspected crime involving children is worthy of and necessary to report.
This failed to be a “personal matter” when a crime was alleged.
Any “eros(ion) of class relationsâ€, if any, can be found in comments from readers. Our role here was to report an incident that perhaps, had it happened to you, might have caused you to feel endangered, to call the police, and try and rectify.
Just wondering if there are any updates to this story…