The mother of a 5-year-old girl who accused a Vernon Hills day-care worker of fondling her has filed a lawsuit in Lake County Circuit Court seeking more than $15 million in punitive damages from the worker’s employer and supervisor.
The suit, filed Wednesday, alleges that Tina Green, a supervisor at the Children’s World day-care center, 841 West End Ct., Vernon Hills, and Children’s World corporate officials failed to inform the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services after the girl’s mother told Green that an employee, Amarkosh Malik, had repeatedly fondled her daughter.
Malik was indicted Wednesday by a Lake County grand jury on charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. He is free on bail.
As a day-care supervisor, Green is required by law to report allegations of sexual abuse to state authorities. The suit alleges that Green discussed the girl’s allegations with Children’s World corporate advisers, who advised Green to interview the child. Afterward, a decision was made to not notify DCFS, the suit alleges.
The girl’s mother contacted Vernon Hills police about two months after the first allegation, when her daughter said that Malik had fondled her again, according to Dean Mauro, the attorney representing the girl and her mother. Police investigators responded immediately, Mauro said.
“The key to the case is that all Green needed to do was contact the Vernon Hills police,” Mauro said Wednesday. “The only people who are trained to talk to kids about sexual abuse are cops.”
Malik, 23, of the 100 block of Sterling Heights Road, Vernon Hills, was charged last month with aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Green, 35, of the 1600 block of Brighton Drive in Mundelein, was charged with failing to report the allegation. Both have been suspended from their positions at Children’s World Learning Center until the case is settled, authorities said.
In a written statement, officials of Colorado-based Children’s World Learning Centers said the girl had told Green that she had told her mother a “not truth” when she made the allegation against Malik. The statement also says that Malik “credibly denied the allegation.”
The incident was never reported, the statement says, because the girl’s denial led Green and other Children’s World officials to believe that there had been no abuse.
In an anonymous statement, the girl’s mother, identified only as “Jane Doe No. 1,” said she wants to make sure that similar abuse can’t happen again.
“This is every working parent’s nightmare,” the statement says. “What else could I do but rely on a national day-care facility? We feel helpless, taken advantage of and are angered by Children’s World’s lack of sympathy and their attempts to obstruct police from discovering the truth.”
