Georgia daycare head asks 11th Circuit to scrap conviction over not reporting child abuse

ATLANTA (CN) — The former director of a daycare on a Georgia Air Force base asked a federal appeals court panel Tuesday to overturn her conviction for failing to report suspected child abuse.

Latona Lambert was sentenced to two years of probation in February 2025. On appeal, she claims she was not responsible for the child abuse two of her daycare workers were convicted of committing.

Zhanay Flynn and Antanesha Fritz pleaded guilty to child cruelty for their treatment of 2-year-olds in their care.

A month of surveillance footage, spanning from January to February 2021, showed numerous incidents of child mistreatment, including the teachers spraying toddlers in the face with cleaning fluid as discipline, verbal abuse, and encouraging the children to assault each other in one-on-one fights.

The government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lambert knew of children being abused in one of the 16 classrooms at Childs Development Centers on Robins Air Force Base, Lance Ledet, a recent University of Virginia Law School graduate, told the 11th Circuit.

During trial, prosecutors acknowledged they had no evidence that Lambert had “actual direct knowledge” of any instances of child abuse. Instead, their theory was that Lambert knew of facts giving “reason to suspect” abuse based on inferences from various reports about the management of the classroom and the multi-camera-cycling video feed.

“We don’t have direct evidence that she saw the videos. We don’t know which parts of the videos she might have seen,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart Walker told the circuit judges.

Walker noted that a daycare worker named Bretta Goins confronted Lambert to report that things were not right in the classroom, telling her the teachers were not nice to the toddlers, cursed at them, and played music fraught with profanity in their presence.

Goins told Lambert she refused to return to the room for fear that “something bad is going to happen” to the children and she did not want to be “at fault for it” when it did. After Lambert insisted she work in the room anyway, Goins chose to go home without pay.

“It seems, at least to me, there’s enough of a mental injury here,” U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor said.

“It was so bad that Miss Goins refused to go back to that classroom even if it meant she would suffer the injury of no pay,” the George W. Bush appointee added.

The failure to report statute’s definition of child abuse lists a series of severe conduct constituting physical or mental injury, such as anxiety, depression or change in behavior.

Walker argued the surveillance video footage shows the children’s withdrawal, which Pryor said could be a sign of a mental injury under the law. The attorney said the children can be seen retreating to their cubbies to avoid interaction with the teachers.

“This seems like an odd prosecution under this statute because it defines the effects of the act,” U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Brasher said.

“The teacher here allegedly knows about the conduct but maybe not the injury. Seems like a little bit of a mismatch. I don’t know that she would know the injuries they suffered,” the Donald Trump appointee added.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jill Pryor, a Barack Obama appointee, questioned how the law applies to infants, where the effects of mental abuse may be more difficult to see.

The government did not present sufficient evidence showing these children displayed such injuries, Ledet told the judges.

Lambert argues it would be impossible for her to constantly monitor the feeds for all 341 security cameras throughout the building and that she spent most of each day outside her office, roaming the facility.

She further argues she did report the abuse on Feb. 19, 2021, when a childcare provider named Saengkul Teague told her about a child having their arm yanked by one of the teachers in the toddler classroom.

Teague and Lambert immediately called in a report to the Family Advocacy Program, which began looking into the incident the following week but closed the inquiry two months later.

The circuit judges did not signal when they will release a ruling.

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