Minnesota Rep. Nolan West’s daughter was among the children who were allegedly abused by two former workers at a Blaine daycare facility.
Elizabeth Augusta Wiemerslage, 22, of Coon Rapids, and Chloe Kaye Johnson, 24, of Andover were each charged this month with four criminal counts involving alleged child abuse of infant victims. Video captured the pair flipping, slamming, and dragging the infants, according to the charges.
On Sunday, West posted on X in response to a tweet by Crime Watch Minneapolis about the incidents at the Small World Learning Center in Blaine, declaring, “these monsters tortured our baby.” West included pictures of bruising on his daughter’s arms and legs that he and his wife found suspicious and documented.
We thought these were odd so we documented them, but NEVER assumed they were abusing our baby. pic.twitter.com/8hp5NnBZMn
— Nolan West (@West4MN) July 22, 2024
Alpha News had the opportunity to speak to West in further detail on Tuesday concerning the incidents. West told Alpha News that his daughter “was fine with one of the perpetrators when we would hand her off, but with the other one, she would scream bloody murder.”
“And she’s a super calm baby, super easy baby, so it was like, ‘oh, that’s kind of weird’ but we’re just like ‘oh, I guess she just likes us so much she doesn’t want to leave.’ But also, whenever we would pick her up, she would also be upset and crying,” said West, a fourth-term Republican legislator from Blaine.
West commented that “you could kind of feel the stress of the place when we were there,” noting that “there would be an incident once a week or more, that we would have an incident report.”
Of the reports, West noted, “they had all these weird excuses for them. One of them, they said she rolled over on a magnet. What does that even mean? I don’t know. That was fishy. Now that I’ve been hearing from other parents, they would use these same B.S. excuses with more than us.”
“Really, if you thought about it, none of it made sense, but you don’t assume that people are harming your baby in a daycare,” he added.
West began to become increasingly concerned when his daughter “came home with bruises that were so severe that my wife was like, ‘we need pictures of this.’” West told Alpha News that after switching daycares, one of the most striking things he noticed was his daughter’s positive change in demeanor, arguing, “if your baby is drastically happier at a different daycare, you should at least question the previous daycare.”
West described that prior to the revelations, interactions with other parents at the daycare were like ships “passing in the night” and “it wasn’t until after this got reported that all these parents started talking about everything. Everybody has the same story. It looks like they’ve been doing this for a long time.”
Those same stories were at the forefront of a Wednesday press conference West held in Blaine. Susanne Dickinson, whose granddaughter was one of the infants at Small World, recalled the suspicious cuts and scrapes that began appearing on her granddaughter, and that some of the internal incident reports were not signed by the director.
“As the manager of my job, I’m expected to know what’s going on, employees report to me. I make sure I know exactly the issue, what has been done, and if I cannot determine a course of action, I go to my owners and follow what they tell me to do. Shouldn’t we demand this of the people we pay and leave in charge of our innocent infants and children?” Dickinson declared.
West outlined some of the efforts that he and the other parents were seeking to take to prevent similar incidents from occurring. Along with mandating video recording in rooms where children are present, West also stated that retaining video footage of six months, rather than the currently required week, did not represent an undue burden. “When there is an incident report,” West stated, “families should have access to that video within 24 hours.” West also noted problems related to mandatory reporting, saying staff did not seem to know to report incidents to law enforcement rather than to their superiors at the daycare.
West also expressed hope for increasing the maximum penalties for abuse of children under the age of four, and ensuring that “suspect” daycares “can’t whitewash their records by closing down their daycare, reopening it with the same staff and a different name so that the licenses don’t show up on their reports.” West told reporters that he had been in contact with Minnesota Rep. Sandra Feist, DFL-New Brighton, in hopes of pursuing bipartisan solutions to these problems.
Alpha News reached out to Small World but received no response. In a statement released to KSTP, Small World stated that the “two teachers in question were terminated immediately and indefinitely.”
“We as a company do not condone the acts of the two individuals involved in the incident,” the statement said. “We are remaining open to continue supporting our families who rely on us for care and stability during this difficult time. We want to remind everyone that in the 24 years the Small World Learning Center organization has been open, that this is the first time something of this nature has happened. We have a team of fully dedicated teachers who love what they do and are here for the safety and well being of the children in their care. We are cooperating with the Blaine Police Department and DHS to locate any weaknesses in our policies and procedures to ensure this does not happen again.”
Evan Poellinger
Evan Poellinger, the Alpha News Summer 2024 Journalism Fellow, is a native Minnesotan with a lifelong passion for history and politics. He previously worked as a journalism intern with the American Spectator and an investigative journalism fellow with the Media Research Center. He is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross with degrees in political science and history.
