The owner of a Roanoke Rapids preschool where two former employees have been charged with misdemeanor child abuse said she has “worked with the Roanoke Rapids Police Department and the state to make sure they have all the information needed in (Tyesha) Pearson’s case and answered questions regarding other parts of the investigation.”

Tammy Moseley, who owns Gingerbread House, responded Wednesday to a series of questions submitted by rrspin and addressed concerns she had with the wording of a search warrant filed in the case.

Pearson and the other employee, Olivia Ulrich, have February 5 court dates in Halifax County District Court.

Moseley said, “I am absolutely disgusted by both of the teachers’ actions. I terminated Pearson immediately and Ulrich was already gone from the facility when the complaint about her surfaced.”

Moseley said she was shocked by the investigation and, ultimately, the charges filed against the two employees. There were no red flags which surfaced during the hiring process, she said. “Both had current criminal background checks. Miss Pearson had her bachelor’s degree and Miss Olivia Ulrich had her early childhood credentials.”

She said the current status of the facility is “we are operating” and the daycare is not in jeopardy of losing its license. “The state has confirmed this.”

One section of the search warrant, she said, is inaccurate. The document notes the mother of the child who was initially injured, purportedly by Pearson, was instructed by Moseley to sign “a type of waiver concluding the injuries were sustained from (the mother’s) child fighting with other children in the facility. This parent advised she was never told who the other children were and did not receive a copy of the waiver.”

Asked whether this was true or false, Moseley stated, “It is not true. It is not a waiver. It is an incident report form that all facilities have to fill out when someone gets any type of injury. It is for documentation purposes and usually the parents do not get a copy unless they request them, but we would have been more than happy to have provided a copy if anything had happened that had to be documented. We are not allowed to give out another student’s name to a parent.”

Moseley also brought up another concern about the wording in the search warrant. “It was stated that I viewed the video the night before Miss Pearson came to work and she was allowed to stay in the classroom for the day,” Moseley responded. “That is not true. I have text messages between me and another employee asking them to come and take over the classroom at 9:15 a.m. I had to get the paperwork ready and a witness. Miss Pearson was monitored the entire time on a camera from my office.”

Moseley said she had trouble viewing the video with the family. After an hour and a half, “we gave up. I cannot view it. It finally let me view it on the morning of.”

Moseley said she has several text messages dating back to September where she informed a security company she could not “go back and view footage and that I was having trouble and the issue was never fixed by them.”

In response to a series of violations which have occurred at the facility — see the photo gallery for each violation and an overall list of visits — Moseley acknowledged, “We did have several violations but all of them were corrected. One I even reported myself.”

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From this point, Moseley said, “I will do everything I can to make to make sure this never happens again.”