Abuse at N.Y.C. Day Care Was ‘Parent’s Worst Nightmare,’ Prosecutor Says
A husband and wife who operated a day care out of their Queens home were charged this week with kicking and abusing toddlers, dangling them by their limbs and, once, shoving a soiled diaper into the mouth of an 11-month-old.
The couple, Ilya Davydov, 48, and Ksenia Davydov, 41, were arraigned on Tuesday before Justice Gia Morris in Queens criminal court on charges of attempted assault and endangering a child’s welfare. If convicted, they face a sentence of up to four years in prison for each count of attempted assault.
“The allegations in this case are a working parent’s worst nightmare,” the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said in a news release announcing the charges on Thursday. “At the bare minimum, parents should be able to rely on a child’s basic needs being met and the safety of their children being assured.”
Both Mr. and Ms. Davydov pleaded not guilty and were released on the condition of supervision and the surrender of their passports, according to their lawyer, Camille Opal Russell.
Ms. Russell said on Thursday that her clients strongly contested the charges against them. “My clients look forward to their day in court,” she said. “They vehemently deny any wrongdoing and intend to defend this case to the very end.”
The couple operated the state-licensed day care center, called KSE Service Inc., in their home in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood, the district attorney’s office said. The facility was closed in December 2023, immediately after the police and New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, the licensing agency, inspected it based on an anonymous tip.
During a search, the police found hundreds of hours of video footage taken inside the day care that showed Mr. and Ms. Davydov kicking the children, throwing them and hurling objects at them.
The charges involve recurring episodes in which the couple physically abused nine children. They underscore a perennial crisis among working parents in New York and across the country who struggle to find affordable, dependable care for their children.
In one such incident, according to the district attorney’s office, Ms. Davydov held a pillow over an 11-month-old infant’s face. On other occasions, she held the same child upside down by his arms and legs and dropped him onto furniture. Her husband also hit the baby on the head.
Prosecutors say that Mr. Davydov hit a 17-month-old boy with impaired hearing and lifted him off the floor by the hood of his jacket. His wife also suspended the baby by his shirt and leg and then dropped him on a table with such force that surgically implanted hearing devices came loose from his head.
Mr. and Ms. Davydov are not the first operators of a home-based day care in the city to be accused in recent years of endangering the lives of the children they look after.
In September 2023, a 1-year-old boy died of fentanyl poisoning at a Bronx apartment that was functioning as a day care. Later that month, officials discovered that ghost guns and parts were being 3-D printed at an apartment-based day care in East Harlem.
There are about 7,700 home-based day cares in New York City, according to the city health department, which inspects them on behalf of the state.
