Daycare Worker Charged With Raping 1 and 2-Year-Old Babies; Cops Allegedly Found Video of Her With Infants
An Ohio judge set a $2 million bond for a 25-year-old daycare worker after she was arraigned on charges of raping two infants at a daycare center in that state on Monday.
In a WKYC report, prosecutors at the arraignment conducted by closed-circuit television on Monday morning said the state has "very strong evidence" against Heather Koon who allegedly raped her 1 and 2-year-old victims at the ABC KIDZ day care where she worked in Elyria, Ohio.
Police reportedly discovered a video of the woman assaulting the infants on a laptop while checking up on her boyfriend, James Osborne, who is a registered sex offender.
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According to Fox 19, the laptop was first confiscated during Osborne's arrest at his apartment. He is reportedly listed on Lorain County's sex offender website as living at another address. A later check of the laptop revealed the it belonged to Koon and cops found a video file of Koon "engaging in sexual conduct with an unknown infant" according to a police report.
The father of one of the infants who did not want to be identified, told Fox 19 that he was still in shock about the assault on his child and is speaking out after the day care tried convincing him to keep it quiet.
"I still haven't wrapped my mind around it. It's every parent's worst nightmare," said the infant's dad. "They [daycare] tried to act like it was a simple assault. A few hours later they called us back again and asked us to keep it discrete," he added.
He said he was able to identify his child after police showed him still photos from the video. He is now advising parents whose children have been at the daycare to check whether or not their child was victimized.
"Any child that's old enough to talk, they should talk to. Any child that's not old enough to talk should be taken to a physician," he said.
Carlos Johnson, an attorney for the day care told WKYC that his client was fully cooperating with the sheriff's department as they investigate the case.
"We are compiling a list of names and families for the sheriff's office for when Koon worked at the daycare to aid them in their investigation," said Johnson.
"This is a tragic situation and we have reached out to each of the families that have children in the care of ABC KIDZ daycare."
One mother, Andrea Lankey, told WKYC that her 2-year-old son used to be under Koon's care and said she scheduled a doctor's appointment as soon as she heard of the allegations.
"I have to meet with a child advocate on Monday so they can evaluate him and see if there's any more red flags," she said.
She explained that for the last several months she has been noticing a few red flags pointing to possible abuse but she did not give them much notice until now.
"He (her son) doesn't like his diaper being changed, he doesn't like being touched, and then when I used to drop him off there he used to scream so bad that he would be like hyperventilating. Then this comes along and it was kind of like whoa like something might actually have been going on this whole time."
