Nursery Owner Tells Of Relief

A nursery owner falsely accused of assaulting a two-year-old girl in her care yesterday blamed modern discipline techniques driven by political correctness for her 14-month ordeal. Olive Rack, 56, was cleared by magistrates after being accused by two council inspectors of assault when she disciplined the misbehaving toddler by leading her by the arm and putting her on a “naughty chair”.

Mrs Rack, who has run the nursery for 20 years, was charged with common assault and had the threat of losing her home, livelihood and reputation hanging over her for more than a year before the case went to trial.

After a two-day hearing, during which the toddler’s mother offered a staunch defence of Mrs Rack and her discipline techniques, magistrates ruled that she had behaved perfectly reasonably and used appropriate force.

Yesterday, at work for the first time since the incident in July last year, she said that the case could have serious implications for nurseries around the country like hers, which employ a strict discipline ethos.

In the little girl’s case, Mrs Rack was using a tactic inspired by the television programme Supernanny, in which the child was removed to a “naughty chair” after misbehaving.

Mrs Rack said: “The case was born out of a clash between a common sense approach and political correctness. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.

“Somebody has got to decide what common assault actually is. Surely it’s got to be where there is an intent to harm, not when you’re just touching a child or moving her away to protect another child. The prosecution barrister was implying that you cannot touch children at all. If that’s the case, how can you change a nappy? What do you do when you take a child for a walk and you can’t hold his hand – let him run in front of a car? There are too many do-gooders quoting the Human Rights Act at you.

“The toddler hit the baby on the head so I took the girl by the hand, spoke firmly to her and put her on the chair before checking on the baby. There was no screaming or finger-poking, as was later claimed.”

Her ordeal began after two early learning advisers from Northamptonshire county council, Gillian Whall and Julie Medhurst, visited the Tresco House Day Nursery in Kettering, Northants, on a routine inspection last July, and saw what they claimed was the assault. They accused Mrs Rack of dragging the toddler across the room, screaming at her and poking her index finger in her forehead as she sought to impose discipline after the girl had hit a baby over the head with a wooden toy brick. The claims were later branded “highly exaggerated”.

Mrs Rack said: “I thought nothing of it at the time. The child was having a tantrum like two-year-olds do and I did what I always did.

“Gillian Whall immediately went over to the girl and began cuddling her, which infuriated me because it sends out completely the wrong message and rewards the child for being naughty, so I went outside.

“A few minutes later, the two inspectors walked past me without a word and that was that, I didn’t think anymore about it.”

Five weeks later though, she was staggered to answer a knock at the door and find an Ofsted official notifying her that a complaint had been made, although she did not offer any details.

That was swiftly followed by a visit from the police, who said she was being investigated for common assault.

Mrs Rack said: “When Ofsted told me a complaint had been made I presumed it was someone trying to get back at me because I’d recently been giving evidence in a court case against them. When I heard what I was supposed to have done I was completely shocked.

“I still wasn’t too concerned because I never thought it would get as far as me being charged. I thought once they had heard my side of the story that would be an end to it.”

Under Ofsted regulations, Mrs Rack was obliged to stay away from the nursery – even though she lives above it in the same building.

She busied herself with another one she owns in Skegness, Lincs, as well as continuing the administration involving both.

She said: “It was a terrible time waiting as the case proceeded. There was total uncertainty over the outcome and our whole livelihood and reputation was on the line. It could have all been taken away, and for nothing.

“Fortunately, all the parents at the nursery stood by me and I didn’t lose any children, but the result could have been catastrophic.

“During the trial I began to feel better because I felt Gillian Whall was making a bit of a mess of her evidence.” Mrs Rack’s case was then boosted by a seemingly unlikely saviour – the mother of the toddler she was supposed to have assaulted.

She told the court in Towcester that the inspectors’ versions of events were “highly exaggerated”, that she trusted and believed Mrs Rack and that the girl continued to go happily to the nursery.

Mrs Rack, who has worked with children since leaving school, said: “The mother didn’t want anything to do with the prosecution and only agreed to give evidence very late in the day. It was a great help to me.” She said her acquittal was unlikely to be the end of the matter.

Mrs Rack is considering taking action against those she believes are waging a campaign against her which ended up with her in the dock, falsely accused and facing the loss of everything she spent her life working for.