Golden Valley day care discipline: Pinned to a mattress

A provider is charged with using safety pins to create homemade straitjackets.

By CHAO XIONG, Star Tribune

Last update: November 10, 2009 - 9:44 AM

A longtime day care provider in Golden Valley turned children's pajamas into impromptu straitjackets and safety-pinned children to mattresses to control and discipline them, according to criminal charges filed in Hennepin County District Court.

Arvilla Marie Lilly Meinhardt, 70, told authorities she had been using the discipline for about eight years on 2- and 3-year-olds who attended her in-home day care, according to the criminal complaint. She is charged with gross misdemeanor malicious punishment of a child and false imprisonment.

Meinhardt and her husband and daughter were arrested Friday, but she is the only one facing charges. There is the "potential" for charges against her husband and daughter, said Golden Valley Police Chief Stacy Altonen.

Meinhardt is charged in connection with the treatment of one girl, now 7, whom she cared for from 2003 to 2006. Police are investigating whether other children might have been similarly treated. Meinhardt's license is suspended pending the outcome of this case.

"I wouldn't rule out future charges," Altonen said.

Police were alerted to the case when the 7-year-old girl recently told her mother that Meinhardt used safety pins to pin her to a mattress during nap time. The girl "has increasingly expressed anger and bitterness concerning her memories" of Meinhardt, the criminal complaint said.

Meinhardt and her husband, who were in court Monday, declined to comment afterward.

Her attorney, John Leunig, said his client has a clean criminal record with not so much as a traffic ticket. He declined further comment.

A few parents who attended the hearing also declined to comment.

What officers found

According to the charges: Police arrived at Meinhardt's home on Thursday morning. When she answered the door, she refused to allow them in or answer their questions about whether she ran a day care.

Meinhardt asked the officers to wait outside so she could finish an emergency phone call, the complaint said, and when she reopened the door several minutes later, she was "looking quite pale and sweating profusely," according to the charges. Officers inspected the home and said they saw six to seven children in a play area, kitchen and hallway.

Meinhardt led officers to a back room that contained six cribs that held several infants, alert and crying, the complaint said. Officers saw a bowl filled with large safety pins and also saw a pair of pajamas with pin holes in its sides, according to the complaint.

The children were reunited with their parents and officers searched the day care. According to the complaint, authorities found more pajamas with safety pins in them under a bed and a drawer full of pajamas with pin holes in them. A mattress in a crib also had pin holes, the complaint said.

Licensed to take in 14 kids

Meinhardt told authorities that she would take the children's arms out of the pajama sleeves, pull the sleeves behind their backs and fasten them together with a safety pin, according to the charges. She said she also pinned pajama legs together to restrict movement and pinned pajama zippers shut so the children couldn't get out.

Meinhardt was first licensed as a day care provider by the state in 1976, according to a Hennepin County official. She had been running a center out of her Golden Valley home for several years, caring for children younger than age 4. She was licensed to have as many as 14 children, but it's unclear how many she was caring for at the time.

The state licenses day care centers, but counties are responsible for regular inspections. Meinhardt's day care has only one complaint on record, from 2005, saying that it was over capacity. Inspectors found that the complaint was not substantiated.

Chao Xiong • 612-673-4391

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