Nursery owner calls child cruelty claims ‘so untrue’
ACHILDREN’S nursery owner facing child cruelty charges has told a jury the allegations against her were untrue.
Lesley Bates, her daughter and nursery manager Joanne Roach and deputy manager Joanna Trevett are on trial at Bristol Crown Court.
They deny multiple counts of causing cruelty to a person aged under-16 at Redroofs Nursery in Warmley and their Kingsway site between January 1983 and November 2016.
Bates, 75, of Poplar Road, Warmley, faces 24 charges.
Roach, 53, of Golden Valley Lane, Bitton, faces three charges.
Trevett, 36, of Courtney Way, Kingswood, faces one charge.
Alleged child cruelty comprises of:
Deliberate force-feeding Deliberate pulling or dragging children around, such as by their arms
Deliberately leaving children to sit in soiled clothing
Deliberately excluding children from their room in the nursery
After three and a half weeks of the trial the judge amended dates to 2007 in count nine, alleging Lesley Bates assaulted or ill-treated a named boy.
The jury was told that, on count 10, the judge ruled no case to answer on a charge that Lesley Bates assaulted or ill-treated an unnamed child between January and April 2009.
Count 18 – alleging each defendant force-fed children – has been amended to two counts reflecting each defendant.
The prosecution has withdrawn count 24, which alleged Lesley Bates assaulted or ill-treated a specified girl while feeding her milk.
Bates told the court she and her husband aimed to run their own full-time nursery with a focus on outside amenities, where children attended at least two times a week for continuity of care.
She said in 1979 she opened a nursery in Warmley, initially with 12 children aged two to five but then extended the nursery and got permission to care for babies.
Bates confirmed she opened a second nursery in Kingsway, St George, in 1989.
After her daughter Joanne qualified as a nursery nurse she went to that site.
Bates said that her objective was to provide educational care service for parents. By 1989 she had about six staff at St George and six or seven staff at Warmley.
Bates said her daughter-in-law Sarah did all the business correspondence, spending a day at Warmley and a day in St George each week.
She said she ensured that both nurseries were Ofsted compliant, with the help of an HR company, and staff had handbooks to acquaint them with proper work practice.
Bates told the court that, regarding count one alleging cruelty to a girl in 1983, she could not recall the
girl. She denied putting the child in a corridor until she had eaten some pineapple.
She told the jury she did not recognise a witness who claimed that was what had happened.
Regarding count two, which alleges that in 1988 Bates forced food into an unnamed child’s mouth, Bates said it was “so untrue”.
She told the court: “It just did not happen”.
She told the jury she never received a complaint about such an incident.
The case continues.