McKinney daycare worker accused of abuse faces 7 additional charges

UPDATE: The former daycare worker facing child abuse charges, is scheduled to be in court on Dec. 16, 20019 in Collin County.  Jessica Joy Wiese was charged with several counts of abuse of several children at the Joyous Montessori Daycare center in McKinney, Texas in December 2018.  That daycare center was permanently closed.  Currently, there are three other independently owned and operated daycare centers in North Texas with the same name, Joyous Montessori Daycare.  Neither, Jessica Joy Wiese, nor the McKinney daycare, has any affiliation with the independently owned and operated daycare centers with the same name in Keller, Lewisville and Fort Worth counties.

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Police in McKinney say there are more charges for the daycare worker accused of abusing children in her care.

Jessica Wiese, 44, was arrested in December and charged with injury to a child after police say a 2-month-old in her care at Joyous Montessori School suffered 12 broken bones.

The children Wiese is accused of injuring were students at the daycare. She no longer works there. But police say when she did, surveillance cameras recorded her abusing children when she was alone with them.

The family that made the initial complaint against Wiese say they were horrified by what happened to their child and wanted to make sure no other children were injured. There are now seven additional child victims she is charged with injuring.

McKinney police say investigators reviewed video from the Montessori School where Wiese worked and learned about the additional incidents. She is now charged with 8 felony counts of injury to a child.

Ariel Murphy, the mother of a now 3-month-old son, first noticed a severe bruise on her son in December. When she took her child to the hospital, she learned he had 11 fractured bones and a 12th injury to his wrist that doctors said appeared to be a healing fracture. Police say the injuries occurred at the Montessori School.

Murphy says she still gets nightmares that she’s enduring the pain her son, Kairo, must have felt in Weise’s care.

“My dream was that I went through everything that he went through like I was him,” she said.

Arrest affidavits state that surveillance video from the daycare shows Wiese “[holding Kairo] by his leg and shaking him up and down” and abusing other babies — “causing [one] to cry out in pain… slamming his head into the changing table… pressing down, crushing [his] face downward, body [slamming].”

“I was completely devastated,” Murphy said. “I got chills.”

Wiese was first arrested early last month for Kairo's injuries and charged with injury to a child. Since then, McKinney police say they've been reviewing more surveillance video from the daycare. They did not do any on-camera interviews but say the evidence they found resulted in an additional seven counts of injury to a child related to children at the daycare.

“My first reaction was I hope that they’re okay. I hope they’re going to be okay. I hope that nothing happened or that we can fix it. I hope that everything is within the scope of medical treatment,” Murphy said. “The second thing I just felt like helpless. Like why?”

According to the Texas Health and Human Services Department, the daycare has had no violations in the past three years of inspections. 

McKinney police are still asking any parents who had a child cared for by Wiese in the last 18 months that have concerns to contact them.

FOX 4 reached out to Wiese’s attorney for comment, but our calls have not been returned. She is being held in the Collin County Jail on a $525,000 bond.