Update in day care disfigurement probe

FALL RIVER, Mass. (WPRI) - New details are shedding some light as to what happened the day a toddler was permanently disfigured at a Fall River day care center.

On June 23, a two year-old girl was bitten 12 times by another child so viciously, it required emergency surgery to repair her eyelid. A lawyer for the family says the girl will need plastic surgery down the road to repair her face.

Court documents obtained by Target 12 reveal doctors told the child’s caregiver she will have “permanent disfigurement to her eyelid and her eyelashes would probably not grow back.”

The documents also reveal the girl was bitten on three separate occasions over approximately four hours, yet the day care providers did little to protect the victim from the other child.

Archangels Home Day Care has been shut down and the husband/wife owners Ashraf William, 40 and Mervat Heinen, 35 have been charged with three counts of child endangerment. Both have been released on $1,000 bail.

Neither answered the door at their 6 Pulaski St. home that housed the day care when Eyewitness News paid a visit yesterday. A surveillance camera installed above the door keeping watch over visitors.

Investigators say the child was first attacked at 11 a.m. then again around noon. The most vicious bites to the victim’s face happened an hour after that. Yet according to police, Heinen told the victim’s caregiver, her grandmother, she was “bitten, but it wasn’t bad.” Heinen told her she would bring the girl home at 9 p.m. when the grandmother got out of work.

It was ten hours after the initial bite and 7 hours after half her eyelid was torn away, that the grandmother saw the girl and immediately took her to St. Anne’s hospital in Fall River.

Upset, the grandmother kicked Heinen out of the hospital, according to statements to police. The girl was whisked by ambulance to Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence where she was operated on just before midnight.

Second Biting Victim

The court documents also shed light as to what happened inside the basement day care center that day.

The day care owners told investigators from the Massachusetts Department of Social Services the initial bite happened when the pair was fighting over a toy. An hour later one of the owners, William, says he heard “screaming” and observed the same female child was biting the victim again. The pair was separated momentarily but an hour later during nap time with a half dozen kids dozing on mats on the floor, the child attacked the victim again, this time biting her cheek, eyelid and ear.

What the owners did not tell DSS, but was uncovered by police later, is the same girl attacked another child at the day care that day. A two-year-old boy was bitten on the temple but was able to push the girl away.

The boy’s mother, Shannon Furtado told Target 12 she didn’t know about the bite until she picked her son up that afternoon.

“I looked at my son and I said ‘what is this on his face?” Furtado said. “[The owner] said, ‘oh yeah he got bit… maybe next time I’ll call.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

Furtado supplied Target 12 with a blurry cell phone snapshot of the injury, taken more than a day after the bite. She says the injury had healed substantially, but a red bite mark to the child’s temple is clearly visible.

A doctor recommended she treat the boy with an antibiotic ointment. Furtado immediately removed her son from the day care – opting to keep the toddler with family while she works and goes to school.

The documents state the child who bit the others is a 17 month-old girl who had just arrived at Archangels Day Care the day before. Police say the girl is being cared for by an aunt while the mother serves time at the Brisol County House of Correction for an undisclosed crime.

The aunt told police she was never notified about the biting incident until she went to pick up her niece and “saw a little girl sitting on the lap of Ashraf who was holding an ice pack to her eye.”

The woman tells police “in all the time she has been in her niece’s company she has never seen her bite anyone.” The child had been in foster care, according to statements and previous caregivers never raised any flags.

Fall River police confiscated bloody clothing from both children and have entered photographs in as evidence.

Archangel Day Care

Target 12 checked into the background of Archangel Day Care center with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC).

Records show the Heinen and William, both of Egypt, opened the facility in August 2008. In March of 2009, the EEC paid a surprise visit and discovered the facility was over-enrolled. They are licensed to care for 10 children with an assistant. On that day, Heinen was alone with 8 kids.

The woman told investigators her assistant called out sick and was unable to find a replacement on short notice.

Massachusetts’ regulations require a 6-to-1 kids-to-caregiver ratio. The day care center was cited and it went on its record. A spokesperson for the