Nursery nurse scrawled moustache on a toddler
A NURSERY worker who drew a moustache on a sleeping toddler’s face with permanent marker and then took a picture of him was yesterday convicted of assault.
Laura Houston, 25, also pulled the one-year-old boy’s legs away from him, causing him to fall and hit his face on the floor, leaving him in tears.
She also tripped a little girl up while walking along beside her and holding her hand.
And she slapped a third toddler across the chest to get him to be quiet, which made him freeze in fear.
Houston denied she had done anything wrong and showed no emotion when she was convicted of assaulting the three one-year-olds in her care between August 2014 and February 2015. She was warned she faces jail.
Houston’s victims were so young they could not speak and could not tell their parents or the police what had happened to them at the nursery in East Renfrewshire.
The attacks were witnessed by junior nursery workers who worked alongside Houston.
Logan Craig and Jennifer Mackie, who were in training at the time, testified against their former colleague.
Miss Craig said she saw Houston drawing on the little boy’s face while he was asleep and Miss Mackie said Houston admitted she had done it.
Giving evidence at Houston’s trial at Paisley Sheriff Court, Miss Mackie said: ‘[The boy] had a moustache drawn over his top lip.
‘Laura was, at that time, taking a picture with one of the nursery cameras of [him] with the pen on his face. Logan said Laura had drawn on his face.
‘I looked at Laura and she confirmed that.’
She said Miss Craig had then taken the child to the bathroom when the marker would not come off with face wipes.
And Miss Mackie, who is now 18 but was only 16 at the time, said she was shaken by the incident. She added: ‘I was still training.
‘This is a qualified member of staff – I’m meant to be looking up to her.
‘I felt a bit uneasy. I had seen Laura tripping up the children as well.
‘I witnessed Laura calling [one boy] over and putting her leg out and tripping him over.
‘[The boy] fell over and fell to the ground. He started crying as he’d obviously fell and hurt himself. She picked him up as if she’d done nothing wrong and just calmed him down.’
Houston had originally been charged with assaulting five oneyear-olds and faced one charge in relation to each child. But following her trial she was cleared of two other alleged assaults against a boy and a girl due to a lack of credible and reliable corroborated evidence.
Sheriff Colin Pettigrew called for her to be assessed by social workers ahead of sentencing and adjourned the case until next month, warning her he may jail her for her shameful antics.
He said: ‘This is an anxious case for all – for the accused, for the witnesses, for the children and the parents. You were in a position of trust.
‘Your assaults on three separate children aged one over a period of months constitutes, in my view, a serious breach of the trust the parents and guardians of the children placed in you.
‘I require to consider all sentencing options which may be open to me.’
‘Tripping up the children’