Parent: KinderCare mishandled claim against ex-worker accused in sex videos case

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

UPDATE @ 9:35 p.m.: Former KinderCare worker Jerin Lloyd, who once rolled up a child at the facility in a rug so tight he couldn't breathe, should have been arrested for that incident, the father of the child said Tuesday night.

“I was angry,” Josh Whitt told News Center 7’s Sean Cudahy. “I was upset that something wasn’t done before it escalated to something else.”

That something else occurred Tuesday afternoon, when court records revealed that Lloyd, 25, a mentor in different organizations and a former childcare worker at KinderCare, is in the Greene County Jail on charges accusing him of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles.

According to court records, “Lloyd indicated that he is currently a mentor to 12 people and two other juvenile males through different organizations that he participates in.”

The charges accuse Lloyd of recording himself performing a sex act on himself and texting it to a juvenile. Lloyd also was instructing the juvenile to send photos and sexual videos to him, according to the court records.

There were three videos of the juvenile sent to a number belonging to Lloyd, those same records show.

Tuesday afternoon, KinderCare officials confirmed that Lloyd worked at the Xenia location from October 2018 until his resignation April 19. He was hired as a bus driver and in March became an assistant teacher in the school-age classroom.

He was placed on administrative leave in mid-April after a parent complained he rolled up an elementary-age child in a rug. KinderCare officials said the incident was reported to police, county Children Services and licensing.

Whitt, the father of the child who was rolled in the rug, said he is going to contact police and ask that they reopen the investigation into the April incident he said traumatized his youngest son.

“He was scared to go back in there,” Whitt said, noting he “found out Mr. Jerin wrapped him in the rug so tight that his hands were jabbing into his stomach.”

Whitt said he learned the prosecutor’s office declined to press charges because teachers concluded Lloyd could have been playing with the child.

Whitt said that characterization isn’t accurate. “It should have been handled a different way. They should have arrested him.”

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Rebecca Cartwright, a former instructor who saw Lloyd at the facility briefly before she resigned less than two months after he was hired on, said people need to know their children are safe when they bring them to daycare.

“It makes me wonder could something have happened to other kids while they were there and it was never caught,” Cartwright said.

There needs to be questions about how people are hired on, she said.

For parents who have children at the KinderCare in Xenia, Cartwright suggested they question their children and talk with them.

“The only way that child is going to be OK with saying something, is maybe they don’t realize what happened is wrong. If they don’t realize that it’s wrong, they’re not going to say something,” Cartwright said.

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