WINFIELD – Two more lawsuits have been filed against a Hurricane daycare center accuses a worker of abusing children.
Samantha Kinnear, as mother of M.G., filed one complaint November 25 in Putnam Circuit Court against My Family Daycare and Preschool LLC and director Kelley Matusic as well as an unidentified daycare worker. Calvary McGuire and Taylor Moore, as parents of A.M., also filed their complaint the same day against My Family, Matusic and Abigail Alford, who teaches the 6-year-old class at the facility.
Those two lawsuits were filed five days after another mother says her 6-year-old daughter was abused by Alford.
Cary
| Courtesy photo
“When is it going to stop? When is enough enough?” attorney Michael Cary told The West Virginia Record. “However long it takes, I will get justice for each and every family involved.”
Cary, who is representing all of these plaintiffs, also has filed more than a dozen lawsuits in recently weeks against a Cross Lanes daycare center with similar allegations.
According to the Kinnear complaint, the unidentified teacher grabbed M.G. so hard by her upper arms in September 2023 that she left severe bruising on the girl’s arms. Kinnear says she documented the abuse with photographs.
“M.G. told her mother that her teacher hurt her,” the complaint states. “Plaintiff Samantha Kinnear immediately reported the abuse to defendant Kelley Matusic, who then tried to brush off the incident rather than following proper protocol to investigate the allegation and report the suspected abuse within 24 hours to proper law enforcement authorities and/or the Department of Health and Human Resources.
“Even more troubling, defendant Matusic attempted to discredit the minor child and told M.G., ‘That didn’t happen. Don’t say that,’ when she was confronted with the abuse allegation.”
According to McGuire and Moore complaint, video footage taken September 24 “reveals a scene of utter chaos.”
“The classroom, overcrowded with more than six children, was being managed solely by a single employee – Ms. Alford,” the complaint states. “This stark imbalance between the number of children and the lone staff member underscores a severe lack of adequate supervision and support, raising concerns about the ability to ensure the safety and proper care of each child in such an understaffed environment.”
The complaint says the footage shows A.M. – who has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and is severely limited in speech development – sitting in a single chair in front of a television screen while another child A.H. (the child at the center of the first lawsuit) is dragged across the classroom by Alford.
“Alford pulls the minor child A.H. out of the camera view and continues her abuse of the child directly in front of plaintiff A.M., who becomes visibly distraught by the abuse she is witnessing by Alford against the minor child,” the complaint states. “Due to her inability to verbalize, plaintiff A.M. begins waving her arms in an attempt to get help for the minor child defendant Alford is abusing.”
The defendants are accused of negligent hiring, negligent supervision, negligent retention, negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, unlawful racial discrimination in violation of the West Virginia Human Rights Act.
The complaints say the plaintiffs has suffered emotional distress, humiliation, mental anguish and other damages. They seek compensatory damages for pain and suffering, emotional and mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, indignity, embarrassment, humiliation, annoyance, shame, inconvenience and other damages. They also seek punitive damages and other relief.
Putnam Circuit Court case numbers 24-C-223 (Kinnear) and 24-C-224 (McGuire and Moore)