Day-Care Operator in Simi Arrested

Capping a three-month investigation, the operator of an in-home day-care center here has been arrested and accused of child abuse for allegedly shaking a 1-year-old boy who suffered brain damage and nearly died.

Margaret Mary Major was released on $20,000 bail Tuesday. She had agreed to turn herself in to the Simi Valley Police Department, which a week earlier had issued a warrant for her arrest. The boy’s head injury was so severe that a neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, where the child was airlifted, “likened it to that of a child who had fallen out of a second-story window and landed on a driveway below,” according to a police declaration.

He was treated at Children’s Hospital for three weeks and transferred to Northridge Medical Center for two weeks. He is now at home in Simi Valley undergoing outpatient therapy.

The Ventura County district attorney’s office last week filed one count of felony corporal injury to a child against Major, with a special allegation that Major inflicted great bodily harm upon the boy. She faces up to 11 years in prison if convicted.

Major, 48, could not be reached for comment Wednesday at her Finchley Court residence, the site of the Major Family Health Care center. Her attorney, Richard Hutton of Arcadia, also could not be reached.

Although police and prosecutors have ended their probe, the state agency monitoring day-care facilities took action against Major nearly three months ago.

Major’s day-care license was revoked Oct. 2, after the state Department of Social Services alleged she either caused or permitted an injury so severe the boy suffered a stroke. The state complaint also alleges that a day before being injured on Sept. 24, the boy received a “swollen lip” while in Major’s care. In total, the boy had attended Major’s day-care center for three days.

It is the second time Major has been implicated in a child’s injury, according to Flo Furuike, a supervisor in the department’s Community Care Licensing Division, which regulates the 1,200 child day-care centers in Ventura, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

“This is not the first time a child was injured when in her care,” Furuike said. “When we suspend a license we feel the clients, whomever they are, are in imminent danger.”

On Feb. 12, 1987, a child suffered a broken foot while under Major’s care. No action was apparently taken and Major reported the incident herself, Furuike said.

Major also was the subject of a county investigation in 1991. Officials had received nearly a dozen complaints alleging she disciplined children too strictly, that her miniature schnauzers sometimes bit the children, and that she constantly yelled at the youngsters in her care.

Furuike said she does not know whether the complaints were substantiated. She said, however, that the last inspection of Major’s facility, in 1994, showed no deficiencies. The six state inspectors who enforce day-care regulations in Ventura County conduct unannounced inspections of each center once every three years.

Major is seeking reinstatement of her license. An administrative law judge will hold a hearing on the matter beginning at 9 a.m. Jan. 21 at the Radisson Hotel in Simi Valley. The hearing is expected to last two days.

Furuike said the state has not received any other complaints from parents whose children were in Major’s care.

Simi Valley Det. John Parks, who led the investigation into the boy’s head injury, said the probe took nearly three months because the district attorney’s office wanted a local medical expert, Dr. William Goldie, to review the case.

“The D.A. . . . wanted me to consult with a local on the issue--not because they didn’t trust the analysis of Children’s Hospital, but because they felt they might need to use someone in case this goes to trial,” Parks said.

In an Oct. 10 request for an arrest warrant, Parks detailed his investigation:

At about 7:35 a.m. on Sept. 24, the boy’s father dropped the child off at Major’s house, watched him play for a few minutes, then went to work. That morning, the boy’s mother called twice, which she had been doing because it was the first time her son had been cared for outside their home. Major mentioned the boy was not eating well and had a runny nose, but cited nothing else out of the ordinary, according to Parks’ declaration.

At about 1:30 p.m., Major called 911 to report the boy had stopped breathing. Parks and two officers arrived within three minutes and found the boy lying in a crib with his eyes closed, breathing with difficulty. Major told an officer that the boy had gone limp in her arms.

At Simi Valley Hospital, an initial exam found no outward signs of injury, Parks wrote.

Tests there, however, revealed the boy had suffered a severe, potentially fatal head injury, with bleeding in the left side of his skull cavity. The boy was airlifted to Children’s Hospital’s intensive-care unit.

In separate interviews that day, both parents gave investigators virtually the same account. They said the boy had been suffering from a viral infection a few days earlier, but by the time he visited his Thousand Oaks pediatrician Sept. 22, he seemed to be better. The night before his injury, he had apparently slipped and fallen while playing with some wooden spoons, hitting his head on the wooden floor. After crying a bit, he quickly resumed playing. The rest of the night was uneventful, Parks wrote.

While the parents were being interviewed at the hospital, Parks and another detective interviewed Major at her home. She said the boy’s mother had asked if he could attend day care after being sick, and Major replied it was fine as long as he had not been feverish for at least two days, Parks wrote.

That morning, however, Major said the boy’s nose ran continuously and that he would scream when she wiped it, as well as when she changed his diaper. After eating a waffle supplied by his mother, the boy began screaming again. Major said she decided to change the child’s diapers before setting him down for a nap. When she laid him on the changing table, she wiped a large amount of nasal discharge from his face, and he let out “a blood-curdling scream.” Then, Major said, he fell silent and went limp, so she called 911, Parks wrote.

Major told police she had been the only adult present all morning.

Neurosurgeons at Children’s Hospital told Parks the boy’s injury was not the result of illness or a fall. They suspected he had been shaken. They also figured the injury must have occurred very close to the time the boy went limp, because he would not have been able to stay conscious with such an injury for long.

Among the allegations in the state complaint against Major is that she was caring for more children than she could handle. On Sept. 24, she exceeded her designated capacity by caring for seven children without assistance, the complaint alleges. State regulations require operators licensed for up to 12 children to have an assistant on hand when caring for more than six children.

The state’s complaint also charges that Major exceeded capacity limits several times between October and December 1991. Those incidents, however, were not deemed serious enough to warrant a suspension of Major’s license, Furuike said.

License revocations, while not uncommon, are not a weekly occurrence either, Furuike said. In the same week Major’s license was suspended, however, the state also suspended a day-care center in Thousand Oaks, where an employee had been accused of spanking a child.

“I have never had two in a week, although people in L.A. say, ‘Yeah, this happens all the time,’ ” Furuike said. “It doesn’t happen here all the time.”

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Bustillo is a Times staff writer, and Green is a Times correspondent.