Video Catches Nanny Hitting Child

When her daughter was 6 weeks old, Nora employed a nanny she describes as an educated person with “stellar references.”

“I loved her,” says Nora, who, for fear of legal repercussions, asked that her real name not be used. “I thought she was perfect.”

But doubts began to creep in, particularly about the nanny’s repeated refusal to follow through on play dates Nora arranged with neighborhood children. Whenever Nora questioned her about it, she didn’t get satisfactory answers. So, about a month and a half ago, she decided to tape the nanny secretly.

“I knew it wasn’t right legally, but, as a parent, I don’t necessarily care,” she says, explaining that her lawyer has told her it was illegal.

“I felt dirty and sneaky and lousy, but when it comes down to it . . . your child is trusting you for everything, and if you have any question at all, you owe it to your child to do that.”

Nora left a hand-held video camera that was always out on a table turned on. She was stunned to see the nanny hit her daughter twice during the day, so hard she says, “If I hit you that hard, you would call it assault.” And, says Nora, “the way my daughter reacted to it (indicated that) she was used to it.

“All I thought I’d find was that she watched TV too much and talked on the phone or had something she wanted to do other than take my child to play. If I thought she hit her, she wouldn’t have been there.”

Nora confronted the nanny, who denied it. Nora dismissed her without telling her she had been taped and with the feeling that the woman didn’t understand that what she had done was wrong.

Nora feels she would be justified in taping future nannies because of something else she saw on the tape. She noticed that her child, who pesters anyone who comes into the house to read her a book, never once asked the nanny.

This suggested to Nora that her daughter had given up on having the nanny read to her. Nora also was concerned about the change she saw in how the nanny behaved when she was around and how she looked on the tape.

“She never had a smile,” she says. “When I left she was smiling at me. (In the tape) the smile was off her face. She stared at TV.”

Nora believes that nannies with nothing to hide should not mind the possibility of being taped. “Perhaps a nanny should sign a statement saying, ‘I understand I will be taped at some point,’ ” says Nora. “Then you’re not violating a nanny’s trust, and a nanny who has a problem with that--maybe she’s not the right nanny for you to begin with.”

But while she thinks she will at some point tape her new nanny, Nora hasn’t done so yet. “You can over-manage your nanny,” she says. “You have to rely on your gut. I don’t think, as a parent, I would tape every nanny I had. I might. I might not. My current nanny knows my story.

“She understands that one day she might be taped.”