Cumberland, Indiana – Around the holidays, Paul Caudill first noticed behavioral changes in his daughter, age 3.
“She would have random outbursts of emotion and it would always be toward bedtime,” Caudill said. “She wouldn’t eat. She would complain about headaches.”
When Pastor David Faulk of New Life Church in Cumberland approached Caudill on February 1st as he dropped his daughter off at daycare on her birthday, Caudill claimed his wife was prepared to take the toddler in for medical tests.
”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.’
”There was a lot of anger that came in towards the end of it but I was in a church with a pastor.”
After being ousted from her position as executive director of Kidz Life Childcare Ministry in late January, Tonya Rachelle Voris, 52, is now facing felony charges of neglect of a dependent and a misdemeanor charge of reckless supervision.
The majority of the parents of the seventeen kids the pastor claimed had likely taken the over-the-counter sleep aid were spoken to the Cumberland Police, according to a Probable Cause Affidavit.
Many of those parents admitted to detectives that the unapproved doses had adverse effects on their kids as well.
In the PC, CPD determined 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.”
While Pastor Faulk claimed that Voris acknowledged giving the children—one of whom was only a year old—the drug, she reportedly resisted speaking with detectives.
”That parental instinct kicked in and, like, man, this is where I drop my daughter off. This is where we expect her to be safe,” said Caudill. ”With it being a church organization, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether my daughter is safe at that facility.”
Caudill said after detoxing his daughter, ”That spunky, sassy little toddler is back, not the little zombie that I used to pick up.”
According to Caudill, he is currently seeking a new daycare for his daughter.
Voris was still out of the Hancock County Sheriff’s custody as of late Sunday afternoon.
