Breach of Trust - a Portland Press Herald special report

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Safety tips | How done | Compare | System

CASE STUDY:
Compromise lets oft-cited operation stay open

Expense, scarcity complicate care search | One nightmare led to another
A day at the YMCA | Case study: Lack of supervision tops list of complaints
Case study: Little is done about too many children

By Andrew Garber
Staff Writer

In a contract for parents, Monique Bolduc wrote that children at her day-care home in Bangor would receive ''affectionate care and a stimulating environment so that your child will experience happy, healthy growth.''

Instead, a state investigation found that she force-fed children, grabbed them around the neck, spanked them and screamed at them.

The Department of Human Services concluded that conditions at Bolduc's day-care home were ''detrimental to the welfare of the children.'' The agency took her to court in October 1993 to revoke her registration. But the state Attorney General's Office settled the case.

The compromise gave Bolduc a license to operate, on the condition that she comply with state regulations and take child-care training classes.

State day-care licensing inspectors complain they do not get enough legal support from the Attorney General's Office. DHS can recall four cases where the state has taken day-care providers to court to revoke their state permission to operate.

In three of the cases, state attorneys settled. Two of the day-care operations - including Bolduc's - were allowed to stay open. One was closed and given the option to apply for a new permit in two years.

The fourth case - dealing with a day-care home operated by Diane Watts in Bangor - is still pending in court.

In Bolduc's case, records show the state was convinced at first that her day-care operation should be closed.

In fact, when a licensing worker suggested to the Attorney General's Office that Bolduc's license be revoked, the response from the state attorney handling the case was, ''I agree without question!''

In a court document, DHS charged that Bolduc was abusive with children in 1992 and 1993. Here are some of the department's allegations:

In one case, a 3-year-old had a bowel movement in the sandbox. ''Bolduc told him to go inside alone and clean himself. The child was not provided a washcloth . . . and had to use his hand.''

Another time Bolduc was ''force-feeding a child, which caused him to cough and spit the food over her face, whereupon Ms. Bolduc grabbed the child by the arm and slapped him across the face.''

Many of the children reported ''Bolduc hit and spanked them. They further disclosed that Bolduc yelled at them and called various children names such as 'retarded,' 'stupid,' or 'friggin idiot.' ''

The state settled with Bolduc in March 1994. In the settlement, signed by her attorney, Bolduc admitted she ''engaged in conduct and practices detrimental to the welfare of children who received child care from her, including inappropriate physical discipline in the form of rough handling as well as yelling, inadequate staff supervision and exceeding the number of children'' she was allowed to care for.

The settlement allowed Bolduc to care for six children.

Two months later, the state inspected Bolduc's home. She got a license to care for 10 children.

Bolduc said in a recent interview that the state was wrong about her day-care operation.

''I want to emphatically state those allegations were not true,'' she said.

Bolduc said she never slapped any child and was never physically rough with children. She said she always properly cared for children, including cleaning them after bowel movements.

''I'm not saying I didn't raise my voice at times, because I did,'' she said. ''I can see that I probably shouldn't have. But as far as anything else that was said, those (allegations) were not true.''

Bolduc said she agreed to the court settlement that acknowledged past problems because, ''at the time I wanted to get it over with. That was basically it. I just wanted it to be over.''

She blamed the episode on two people who worked for her. Bolduc said the workers made up the allegations to close her day-care operation so they could take her clients and start their own business.

''These people who worked for me called the parents and told them these things and I have no doubt they worked with the kids. In all the years I did day care I had never had a problem before then and I didn't have a problem afterwards,'' Bolduc said.

Erika Baker of Bangor said she is one of the workers Bolduc is blaming. Baker said she filed the original complaint against Bolduc and witnessed some of the problems identified in state documents, including Bolduc slapping a child.

''As big a need as there is for day care, I did not need to report her to DHS to start my own day care,'' Baker said. ''That's absurd.''

Baker said that after the news broke about Bolduc's day-care operation, three parents took their children out and asked her to care for them. She later started her own day-care operation.

The DHS investigator, in a report filed in June 1993, wrote that several children were interviewed during the course of the investigation. Several of them said they were spanked or yelled at by Bolduc, according to the report. ''Some of the children that were interviewed were of latency age and their credibility is not in any question at all,'' the investigator wrote.

In February 1996, Bolduc closed the day-care operation on her own.