The Daycare Workers Who Terrorized Children While Wearing ‘Scream’ Masks Now Face Child Abuse Charges

On October 6, 2022, a video showing five former employees of the Lil' Blessings Child Care and Learning Center in Hamilton, Mississippi frightening the young children in their care leaked online, leading to claims of child abuse against the five.

The individuals were identified as Sierra McCandless, Oci-Anna Kilburn, Jennifer Newman, Shyenne Shelton, and Traci Hutson.

In the video, the women wore Ghostface masks and approach innocent toddlers while calling them "monsters"

At one point in the video, one of the masked employees can be seen pursuing a child who is crying around the room as the other children in the room scream and wail in horror.

Each woman now faces three felony counts of child abuse, and Traci Huston further faces two misdemeanor counts of failing to report abuse and simple assault against a minor.

The daycare recordings were made on two consecutive occasions, one in September and one in October, but the daycare owner Sheila Sanders said she was unaware of either occurrence until the films went viral online.

“The people that did those acts are no longer with me,” Sanders told local news outlet. “I do not condone that. I just wanted to say that it is being taken care of.”

According to report, Sierra McCandless, also known as CeeCee, addressed the harassment in a 19-minute Facebook video.

McCandless appears in the viral video wearing the Ghostface mask, reaching within inches of children's faces, and seizing youngsters who attempted to flee, all of which she claims "was not intended to harm anyone and was not done with ill-intention."

“The teachers asked me if I would do it or if they could use [the mask] to get their class to listen or clean up,” she said. “I’m not a child abuser.”

“I was in complete shock of what I witnessed,” Katelyn Johnson, the mother of a child who attends Lil’ Blessings said. “Whether they had a mask on or a mask off, their behavior was unacceptable. My blood pressure was raised. It broke my heart for my child. I was angry.”

In the video, as McCandless terrorizes the youngsters by roaming the room, the employee filming can be heard giggling off-camera,

McCandless stated, "I did not enter with the aim to literally traumatize those children." She added that the youngsters reacted differently, with some crying, some giggling, and a few staring at her blankly.

She stated that she ordered the mask to frighten her coworker, not the children.

“What you all didn’t see was after I had left the room, I took it off and I went back into the classroom,” she continued, “and I said, ‘CeeCee got the monster. It’s not coming back.’ And they would hug me. I’ve known those kids their whole life.”

She also referenced what she claimed to be a similar Christmas-time hoax.

“Last Christmas there were these kids taking Christmas pictures, and they would have the Grinch hiding in the bush over there. And it would come out, scare the kids, and they would run,” she said. “People thought that was funny… Essentially it’s the same thing. It is the same thing.”

The children, she said, reacted the way they did “because they are children.”

Alyssa Hayes, another parent whose child was a victim of the "joke," told ABC News, "I want people to see the dread on [my daughter's] face, because that is what I see every night."

Jennifer Kayla Newman, the employee who taped the video, also posted on Facebook to explain why she did so.

"A few weeks ago, some girls at the daycare purchased Halloween masks to frighten the children, but I did not capture it on tape," she claimed. "When I heard she was going to do it again, I filmed to collect evidence; the video was then forwarded to the parents to illustrate how their child was being handled... "I did not videotape this for laughs."

After the video went viral, local officials, the County Prosecutor, and the District Attorney met with the parents of the children to discuss their choices and inform them of the potential criminal charges that could be filed against the daycare employees.

Sheriff Kevin Crook posted on Facebook, "It was extremely difficult to view these films “It made me sick to my stomach to think of the terror those kids were enduring.”