Daycare claims they were illegally closed after neglect charge

Attorney James Patterson, of the Harder Law Group, called it one of the “most horrible” cases of authoritative abuses he’s seen over the course of his career.

Patterson was referring to the July 2017 shutdown of the No Limits Learning Academy by Child Protective Services deputy Lisa Montera. The daycare owners he now represents are fighting back with a lawsuit filed July 20 against the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and their CPS division for an undisclosed amount.

MCSO spokesman Dave Bristow said the sheriff’s office has only just received notice of the lawsuit and had no comment at this time.

The lawsuit cites three counts against the sheriff’s office and CPS, including a wrongful closure, public defamation and negligence on the part of Montera and her supervisors.

In the wrongful closure count, the suit points to Montera’s use of an improper form to shut the facility down, a form even the Department of Children and Families, which relies on CPS to investigate cases in Manatee County, said is not used for a facility shut down.

Statute also requires a shutdown to be handled much differently than Montera handled the closure of No Limits where she forced co-owner JoAnna Erickson to immediately begin calling parents to pick up their children. DCF previously told the Bradenton Herald that the No Limits Learning Academy could have remained opened throughout the CPS investigation.

Erickson, and her husband Steve, a former police officer turned pastor at the Church Without Limits, were also publicly defamed, according to the lawsuit. Not only did the daycare go from 117 students to a total of seven today, but church membership also dramatically declined after the story went public. However, the allegations proved to be unfounded.

The lawsuit claims in Count III that Montera was negligent in her actions and accuses CPS supervisors of not providing the proper training to its officers.

The incident

In July of 2017, a 10-year-old boy told a mentally disabled 6-year-old boy to tell a 4-year-old girl to pull down her pants while all the children were on the playground. The little girl complied, at which time the young boy, reported to have the mental capacity of a 3-year-old began pulling his pants down, as well.

Teachers immediately intervened and the parents of the children were notified of the incident and the incident was documented, with one exception. No incident report was created on the 10-year-old because the child was the son of former director Katie Salyer, who became the eventual accuser against the Ericksons, who were not on campus when the incident occurred.

Salyer resigned virtually at the same time she was accusing the Ericksons of child neglect to CPS. The first thing CPS wanted to see were the incident reports, which took teachers two hours to find because they were removed from the filing cabinet. They were found under a stack of papers in Salyer’s former desk and turned over to the authorities.

The lawsuit states Salyer “actually falsified attendance documents so that it appeared that her son had not attended the Academy on the date of the incident,” contrary to multiple teachers reporting that he was there that day.

Patterson notes that even if proper protocol was followed and the proper documents were used, the nature of the incident did not reach statutory levels of abuse or negligence required to shut the daycare down.

The suit states that the Ericksons were “wrongfully defamed,” and labeled as child abusers by members of the public in the aftermath of initial media reports. Follow ups to those initial stories began to reveal some inconsistencies in the way CPS conducted itself and the lawsuit claims that members of the sheriff’s office “harassed” the couple, telling them they “better be careful,” in how they move forward, according to court documents.

The daycare center eventually reopened under a different name, Salt Life Kids Academy.

DCF vs. CPS

Though the initial shutdown was supposed to be 90 days, CPS closed its case within two weeks and the sheriff’s office’s criminal case was also closed with both agencies determining the allegations of neglect were unfounded. The Ericksons attempted to get the the day care reopened, but it wasn’t until Aug. 21 that the couple received confirmation of the cases being closed.

The lawsuit alleges the delay occurred because Montera didn’t want to finish the paperwork until she returned from vacation. Upon receiving the confirmation that the case was closed, CPS then told the Ericksons that they couldn’t reopen until DCF said they could because CPS asserted it was DCF that shut them down in the first place.

DCF said they did not order the shutdown and at the time, told the Bradenton Herald that the Academy could have remained open throughout the process because at no time was their license revoked or suspended. DCF also acknowledged that Montera used a form not typically used in a facility shutdown, a form even questioned internally within MCSO.

Patterson could not immediately be reached for additional comment on Monday.

This story was originally published July 23, 2018 at 12:38 PM with the headline "Daycare claims they were illegally closed after neglect charge."