LULING, La. — The St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s office is investigating a complaint of a child being mishandled by a worker at the Special Angels Outreach care center in Luling earlier this month.
The incident occurred on Jan. 13.
Detectives say they’ve looked at several different videos taken from security cameras inside the facility. Video sent to WWL-TV shows a worker at the facility having a hold of one of the boy’s arms and moving him forcibly from one room to another.
The child’s mother said her son had also fractured his foot at the center earlier that day and that he was unable to easily walk. The owner of the center told Eyewitness News by phone that she believes that while the incident could have been handled better, the video seems to have been edited to make the move seem more aggressive than it actually was. She contends that the child hurt his foot later in the day and not prior to the video that was captured.
Special Angels Outreach Owner Lori Bercegeay admitted she is the employee in the video that’s been shared from inside the center.
“I did handle that wrong, it wasn’t malicious and it wasn’t deliberate,” Bercegeay said. “There wasn’t intent to abuse, I’m not a child abuser.”
Bercegeay said the morning of the video she was attempting to put the young boy down for a nap and he was not cooperating.
“We were walking to his pack and play, and I tend to walk fast,” Bercegeay said. “He went to his knees and after seeing it I handled that wrong.”
Bercegeay feels the video looks worse than how it felt in the moment.
“It was like a lift and set down, lift and set down,” Bercegeay said. “The floors are slippery, and the kids they drag themselves around when they’re playing and they enjoy it.”
Bercegeay started Special Angels Outreach three years ago to serve children with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities as well as fully-functioning children and currently serves more than a dozen individuals with a wide range of ages.
The St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office said it has forwarded its findings to the Department of Children and Family Services.
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