Alana Buckley-Carr
The Australian

TWO childcare workers knotted babies’ legs together with sheets in a bid to make their job easier and send the children to sleep quicker, a Perth court was told yesterday.

Tommie Turtle Childcare Centre supervisor Siobhan Tapscott, 34, and worker Lynda Carol Foulds, 46, have pleaded not guilty to seven counts each of common assault for using the unusual tying practice on the babies under their care.

Despite police entering the centre unlawfully - relying on powers held by the Department for Community Development rather than gaining a search warrant - magistrate Pamela Hogan allowed a police video of their attendance at the centre, in the southern Perth suburb of Huntingdale, to be played to the court.

While lullabies were being played in the background, the video showed police walking into a darkened room, with babies sleeping in cots and on mattresses on the floor.

Each baby was swaddled tightly in a sheet - seven of them had their legs bound together by a second sheet - which two detectives likened to a length of rope.

In a video interview taken at the centre in October last year, Mrs Tapscott told officers from the Child Protection Squad that she and Ms Foulds had started using the method to help the babies settle for sleeptime.

“We wrap them up so they’re laying nice and still,” Mrs Tapscott said. “As they go to sleep we unwrap them a bit.”

She said if the babies’ legs were not tied together, it was very difficult to get them to settle and go to sleep at the same time.

She said the sheet was tied such that the children’s legs could get out if they tried.

Although parents knew their babies were being swaddled, Mrs Tapscott said she had not discussed the tying method with them.

The trial continues.

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