SALT LAKE CITY — An investigation into whether workers at a Hill Air Force Base daycare abused kids there has been forwarded to prosecutors, according to parents of some of the children who may have been mistreated.
Those prosecutors will decide whether criminal charges will be filed against any of the daycare workers. The developments were shared with families who then relayed them to FOX 13 News.
Those parents also described being allowed late last year — about 18 months after the start of the investigation — to watch videos from the daycare, called the Child Development Center, or CDC. Parents described seeing recordings from early 2023 of staff slamming babies and toddlers onto the floor and restraining kids with blankets or holding them in headlocks.
The parents listed seven workers seen in the videos handling children in ways the parents say violated standards of care. The parents declined to go on camera and asked not to be identified. They fear retaliation from the Air Force.
The development center provides daycare for children of active-duty personnel as well as civilian employees of the Air Force. But the CDC is now serving fewer families than it once did.
Thomas Mullican, a spokesman for Hill, confirmed to FOX 13 that a hiring freeze is forcing cuts to the CDC. The freeze is part of efforts to reduce spending throughout government.
Thirty-one families have been “disenrolled,” Mullican said in an email.
He added that Hill leaders “will temporarily close the Hill CDC East facility. CDCs traditionally face high turnover, and several recent departures in conjunction with the hiring freeze have reduced the number of supervisors and trainers available.
“Maintaining two open CDCs at current personnel levels would pose an unacceptable risk to the 200 children who remain in care at Hill AFB. Hill AFB leaders are looking at all options to provide quality child care options while the facility remains closed.”
Child care had been a point of pride in the Air Force. At a U.S. Senate hearing last year, Air Force Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller called child care “critical” to military readiness.
“The first thing you do when you get a [permanent change of station] assignment,” Miller told senators, “is you look at, if you have children, where are my children going to go.”
On the child abuse investigation, the Hill base commander in 2023 informed families that 37 children may have been abused at the CDC. That was before agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations watched all the available video from inside and outside the CDC.