A mother and grandmother in Florida face child abuse charges after children were duct-taped to a chair after one took a moon pie they were not meant to have, according to police.
Investigators with the Department of Children and Families (DCF) first alerted police to Ymani Bain, 30, and Frances Chew, 72, about the taping punishment in Daytona Beach on August 12, reported CBS affiliate WKMG-TV, citing an affidavit.
According to the investigators, the father of the three children had said Ymani Bain had bound their hands and the body of one child with duct tape before she put them “in the wall” after they snuck the “moon pie without permission.”
Police said Chew gave Bain the duct tape, though both denied taping or helping to tape the children to chairs and the wall.
Bain bound her children at some point on the weekend of August 6-7, investigators said.
An investigation was launched after the children were removed from the home and led to further allegations that Bain taped the children to chairs and that Chew did not intervene to stop it.
The affidavit obtained by WKMG-TV said Chew told her daughter when the children were “getting out of the chairs.”
Police later charged Bain with aggravated child abuse while Chew was charged with child abuse without great harm.
Bain was previously arrested in Volusia County in 2019 where she was charged with child neglect and abuse, according to Fox 35.
Newsweek has contacted Daytona Beach police for comment.
According to the Florida Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers, in 2018, more than 34,000 children were victims of abuse or neglect, 60 percent of whom were female and 40 percent male.
Some 36 percent of the victims of child abuse or neglect were between the ages of 0 and 6. The Florida Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers said 35 percent of the victims suffered from sexual abuse, 27 percent from physical abuse and 17 percent from neglect.
Newsweek has reported on numerous cases across the U.K. where children have been abused.
In July, a 6-year-old boy in Florida died after he was beaten by his parents for drinking out of a toilet, police said.
Osceola County Sheriff Marcos R. Lopez explained during an August press conference that the boy’s parents, Bianca Blaise and Larry Rhodes Jr. were charged with murder following the death of their child.
Lopez explained that on July 5, officers were called to a hotel following reports from a mother that her 6-year-old son “was drinking water out of the toilet and drowned.”
He added: “The child was transported to a hospital where he was placed on life support for life-threatening injuries.
“Throughout our investigation, it was learned the child was drinking from the toilet but that had nothing to do with why he wasn’t breathing.”