Braxton Taylor
It started when Jennifer Glick, an Army criminal investigator, was told her nearly 2-year-old daughter Evie had tripped, fallen and hit her head at the Navy’s Ford Island, Hawaii, child development center in late summer 2022.
Glick and her military husband were getting ready to leave Hawaii the following year when she said the Navy Family Advocacy Program called with troubling news: Evie may have been physically abused at the CDC. But that was all they were told, Glick told Military.com in a recent interview, and when they requested details of the alleged abuse, videos and information on how and whether the incident was being investigated, they got few answers.
The case provides yet another revelation after Military.com reported over a year ago that nearly a dozen families were stonewalled by the military from getting basic information about alleged abuse of their children. The report triggered outrage from Congress and an immediate inspector general probe. That IG report, released on Monday, found that inconsistent military disclosure policies could potentially leave parents in the dark about reports of their children’s abuse or neglect.
Read Next: Tweaks to Army’s Physical Fitness Test Are Relatively Modest
Evie began to show troubling signs of social withdrawal: thumb-sucking that has lingered far past when a child was supposed to stop the habit, which led to a speech issue, and aggression. She had never been a good sleeper when she was a baby, Glick said, but after day care at Ford Island, she would lie in her crib and stare listlessly, holding on to a blanket for comfort.
“Was she conditioned to do that?” Glick said. “It scares me. Was she hurt as a baby? Was she smothered? We’ll never know, because no one has answered for it.”
The IG report recommended that the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness revise and reissue policy requiring all military branches to uniformly identify, notify and report child-abuse allegations to parents; “maintain all notification” documentation of child-abuse allegations; and that each service should update its own policies in line with the Pentagon’s policy.
The under secretary agreed with the recommendations, as did the services, according to the report, and the Pentagon said it will issue an updated and revised policy by Sept. 30. The IG report did not address specific information, such as videos, to be made available to parents concerned about abuse allegations at a CDC, a main point of frustration for parents.
“The service members keeping our country safe shouldn’t also have to worry about their kid’s safety,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in a statement to Military.com on Thursday. “The inspector general’s report makes clear that it’s Secretary [Pete] Hegseth’s job to fix this pattern of incompetence and ensure military families have access to high-quality, affordable child care. I won’t stop fighting for military families to get the answers and accountability they deserve.”
It wasn’t until March — nearly three years after Evie had supposedly fallen — when Glick and her husband Matthew, an Army senior noncommissioned officer, began to understand what had really happened at the CDC.
The mother of a child who was abused at the same facility, Kaitlin Kuykendall, had posted a video — one she herself waited months to receive from the CDC — on social media showing day-care workers, two of whom were convicted and jailed for assault, abusing then-15-month-old Bella Kuykendall.
And while her face was blurred, Evie was there, too, being hit, shaken and pulled around by day-care workers, Glick said, recognizable by her hair, clothing and gait.
“I’ve taken it really hard, because I’ve been able to help a lot of other people in my 20-plus years in law enforcement,” Glick said, “but I couldn’t help my own child.”
Glick’s case represents another troubling instance of opacity for the military’s child development centers — facilities at bases around the world charged with caring for children up to the age of 5 — and parents trying to find out what happened to their children within their walls.
In an August letter from the Department of Defense in response to Warren’s office, which Military.com obtained, the department said policies required child-care facilities to notify parents “either verbally or in writing” about abuse but did not specify a timeline in which those notifications should occur.
The IG report released Monday said the department issued a memorandum in December 2024 requiring child-care staff to notify parents of alleged abuse and neglect no later than 24 hours after staff were made aware of the incident.
Recently publicized policy revisions from the services following that update still require parents to request video footage of alleged child abuse through the Freedom of Information Act, a transparency law typically used by lawyers and journalists. The IG report said the DoD’s current policy “does not include methods of communication, the type of information to provide to parents, how often to provide updates or the methods for tracking and managing parental notifications.”
As late as February of this year, the Glicks had requested video footage of Evie’s alleged abuse from the Ford Island CDC, but were told to “go through legal and not the CDC,” according to emails shared with Military.com.
The Kuykendalls received the IG report with mixed feelings. In one sense, it validated the concerns they had experienced firsthand with the lack of transparency and communication from the military on its policies.
And while “this is a great first step” in recognizing those shortcomings publicly, Jeremy Kuykendall, an Army officer, told Military.com on Thursday it has not assured them that the cultural, leadership and systemic changes needed to deliver that transparency have or will be fulfilled.
They said they were never interviewed as part of the IG report, the military has not offered an acknowledgment of their plight, and the director of the CDC who oversaw the facilities when the abuse occurred is still in her job position despite the family’s allegations she failed to adequately inform them of Bella’s abuse. The base overseeing the facility said policies were properly followed. The Kuykendalls pursued a legal claim against the Navy last year, alleging negligence, poor oversight and mishandling.
“I have zero trust,” Kaitlin said. “It just seems everyone’s still left in the dark.”
Kaitlin said dozens of families have reached out, including the Glicks, whose stories align with theirs after they started “Operation Mei Mei,” an advocacy effort to prevent abuse at the CDCs and urge transparency from the military. Glick saw the videos of Evie at Ford Island through Operation Mei Mei’s Facebook page, which posts updates on the ongoing CDC abuse issues.
Regarding the CDC director, a spokesperson for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Chuck Anthony, declined to “address questions about the performance of individual federal employees,” citing the Privacy Act, but added that “every review and inspection conducted in the last several years has found CDC management has consistently acted in accordance with established guidelines, procedures and instructions.”
Anthony added that mistreatment is “extremely rare” and if uncovered it is met with immediate corrective action. He said CDCs at the base have increased training, “real time observations of trainers in action,” created a position for senior teachers in the classrooms, and instituted random checks of CCTV video.
Military.com asked Anthony about the Glick case and the perception of mistrust on Thursday afternoon, but did not hear back before deadline.
In an email on Wednesday, Jennifer Glick said she agreed with and is encouraged by the recommendations outlined in the IG report, “but the harsh reality is that they come at a significant cost — one that should have been avoidable.”
“My hope is that this report serves as a catalyst for lasting cultural and procedural change within the Department of Defense,” Glick said. “Safeguarding vulnerable individuals should always remain an uncompromising priority, with proactive systems and clear lines of responsibility in place to ensure such failures do not happen again.”
Related: ‘Betrayal’: Family of Toddler Abused at Navy Day Care Launches Claim that Service Negligently Mishandled Their Case
Story Continues
Read the full article here