Tonya Rachelle Voris, 52, has been charged with felony neglect of a dependent and a misdemeanor charge of reckless supervision while working as a childcare supervisor at New Life Church in Cumberland, Indiana, Fox 59 reported.
Voris allegedly gave 17 children the over-the-counter sleep medication melatonin without their parents' permission. Many parents told detectives that their children had suffered side effects from the doses. She was fired in late January as the executive director of Kidz Life Childcare Ministry.
Police found that Voris "dispensed the Melatonin gummies to forcefully induce sleep in several children for her personal gain in not having to deal with fussy or problematic children who would not sleep during naptime which was characterized by several staff members as their break-time.”
Voris reportedly admitted giving the medication to the children, one of whom was just a 1-year-old, but would not talk to investigators.
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Paul Caudill, who noticed behavioral changes in his 3-year-old daughter, said he was informed of Voris' behavior by New Life Church Pastor David Faulk.
”He pulled me into his office and he had explained to me that one of the employees had been giving my daughter melatonin,” said Caudill. ”I was like, ‘So, you mean that somebody had been drugging my daughter?’ He said, ‘Yeah, well, it’s been brought to our attention that one of our associates has been administering melatonin to a number of children for sixty days.’"
Caudill said after detoxing his daughter, she's "not the little zombie that I used to pick up.”
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