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Five daycare workers in Mississippi have been charged following a video of them scaring children in their care has gone viral.
The video shows the daycare employees wearing a scary Halloween mask, similar to the Ghostface mask seen in the Scream movie franchise, shouting at the group of toddlers, chasing the children around the room and threatening them that they ‘better be good’.
At one point in the clip, an employee wearing the horrifying mask is right beside a child and asks them, “Are you being bad? Do I need to take you outside?”, to which the terrified tot says, “No”, before the worker responds, “You better be good”.
The camera then pans to an unmasked daycare worker who appears to be laughing at the encounter.
The children can be seen screaming, crying and running away in fear from the people who are supposed to be taking care of them.
According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, five workers were arrested and charged. Sierra McCandless, Oci-Anna Kilburn, Jennifer Newman and Shyenne Mills were each charged with three counts of felony child abuse.
The fifth employee, Traci Hutson, was charged with a failure to report abuse by mandatory reporter and simple assault.
All five women were fired once the owner of the nursery, Lil’ Blessing Child Care and Learning Centre, saw the heartbreaking video, as she was not made aware of the incident until the clip went viral.
Monroe County Sheriff, Kevin King, released a statement saying, “It appears to us they were using the mask for behaviour modification. They can’t use corporal punishment, so we think they were using the mask to try to scare the kids into doing what they were supposed to be doing”.
