Caught in the act

It didn't get the predictable 'nanny from hell' headlines in all the newspapers, but in December a nanny was sent to jail for 15 months for assaulting two toddlers in her care. Kingston Crown Court in London had seen how Kelly Lawrence, 24, was filmed last year on a video surveillance camera hitting, shaking and biting the 14-month-old sons of two families who employed her in a nannyshare. The parents had the cameras installed after becoming suspicious when they heard the nanny, in a recording of a telephone call to a friend, calling the children 'little brat' and 'little bastard' and describing how she dragged the babies around because they were too heavy to lift. There are many disturbing aspects to this case, not least that Kelly Lawrence was placed in the job through a well-known nanny agency, she had provided a satisfactory CV and references and she had five years of experience in childcare and no previous convictions. Another is that these employers only became suspicious of the nanny after their phone bills went up sharply. In such cases it means that parents effectively have had to risk letting their children suffer a certain amount of abuse just to catch out the nanny. And another sore issue that it opens up all over again is the use of surveillance cameras.