Family sue after child was breastfed by childcare worker without consent

The family want legislation passed to make breastfeeding another parent’s child without their consent illegal

A fifteen-month-old child was breastfed by a childcare worker without his parent’s consent and, as if that wasn’t troubling enough, it turns out there is no law against it.

The incident took place at Happy Kids Pre-School Daycare in Shingle Springs, California, and only came to the mother’s attention after she overheard two staff members discussing it.

Stephanie Hannah said she heard one say to the other about Westley: “He’s obsessed with boobs”. When she asked what they meant, she was told: “Okay, I was feeding [my baby] and he was staring at me so I was like, ‘Well, just stick it in there and see what he does.'”

Stephanie told TwentyTwoWords: “I felt violated and disturbed that this teacher told me she put her breast in my son’s mouth, he ingested her breast milk and acted like it was totally fine. I went over to my mother’s house right after leaving the daycare and told her what had happened, and she was surprised the teacher would do that. But she also said that breast milk is food and there are milk donors out there.”

Westley’s father, Cooper contacted the daycare director who allegedly became angry and shouted that “it accidentally squirted in his mouth”, by way of an explanation. Westley was removed from the daycare immediately and the couple approached the licensing board representative who interviewed them and agreed that their son’s personal rights had been violated.

They then contacted the police: “The El Dorado County Sheriff’s office actually took a couple of hours to call me back after reporting it to their non-emergency line, and he told me it took him so long to contact me because he had never heard of anything like this in his 19 years of law enforcement and neither had his senior partners. The sheriff forwarded the report to the sex crimes detectives, who were also shocked and disgusted but determined there is no law against breastfeeding someone else’s child without consent. And because my son couldn’t testify against the daycare worker and daycare itself, it would be my word against hers.”

Their next port of call was to file a civil suit against the company. During their civil litigation, the unnamed teacher gave a deposition sharing her side of the story. The woman testified that she frequently breastfed in the classroom. She claimed that it was another teacher who picked Westley up that day and put him next to her, because he seemed curious. She then repeated the story that the daycare director had told the Hannas about the breast milk “accidentally squirting” into Westley’s mouth.

Sounds legit.

The civil case is ongoing, two years after the incident occurred, but Stephanie wants more than anything is to see legislation passed that would make breastfeeding another parent’s child without their consent illegal. She has just launched a Change.org petition in hopes of doing just that.