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| Alivia Sawicki (L) Jaimee Lee Gorman |
On a Friday afternoon nine months ago, Alivia Sawicki’s baby sitter gave the 19-month-old a binky and blankey, then rocked her back to sleep in a car seat.
What happened an hour later is laid out in black-and-white detail in recently obtained state documents.
When the baby sitter’s 14-year-old relative went to wake Alivia, the teen found the car seat “flipped up” with the toddler hunched over.
Her lips were blue and her tongue was out. She wouldn’t wake up. A mark was left on the front of her neck where the fastened chest restraint clip pressed against it.
First responders rushed Alivia to Lower Bucks Hospital. The little girl with wispy blonde hair, apple-round cheeks and a wide smile was pronounced dead as her family stood at her bedside — just an hour after she was found.
Months later, after police finished an investigation into the June 16 death, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office declined to press criminal charges against the baby sitter, who was watching nine children at her Bristol Township home the day of the death, according to authorities.
After they were told about the number of children in the baby sitter’s care, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which oversees licensed child care businesses, opened an investigation, but quickly closed it when authorities told them the nine children were related to the baby sitter.
Pennsylvania licensing regulations don’t apply when it’s family members watching other family members. So it appeared the toddler’s death was tragic accident, not a crime.
But a state-mandated child welfare review of the death finalized in late December and obtained by this news organization provided new details, as did Alivia’s parents, who denied that they are related to the baby sitter and also maintained other children regularly in the sitter’s care were not relatives, either.
The new information suggested the baby sitter operated an illegal home-based child care business that violated state regulations created to ensure a safe and healthy environment for children supervised by people who are not family members. In Pennsylvania, it’s also against the law to operate an unlicensed facility.
After this news organization brought these findings to District Attorney Matt Weintraub, he reopened the investigation last month. On Friday, the baby sitter, Jaimee Lee Gorman, 36, of Bristol Township, was charged with operating an unlicensed facility, a third-degree felony when a death occurs.
Gorman, a single mother of three, was video arraigned at the Bristol Township police station. She was released on $100,000 unsecure bail and ordered not to supervise any children other than her own. Family members outside the court of Judge Frank Peranteau Jr., where the arraignment had been scheduled to take place, declined comment.
A cellphone number associated with Gorman was disconnected Friday. Gorman also did not respond to a message sent to a social media account.
When asked about her current employment during her arraignment, Peranteau said Gorman did not mention child care. She reportedly told a Bucks County child welfare social worker last year that she was no longer watching children after the death.
On Friday, Weintraub said his office didn’t believe there was grounds for a homicide charge against Gorman, but that his office “erroneously” relied on a separate and concurrent DHS investigation that did not find any criminal charges were warranted under the day care statute.
“I will not make this mistake again,” he said. “We know now what questions to ask when it comes to violation of the Day Care Act.”
'We want justice’
News of Gorman’s arrest brought little closure to the girl’s parents, Christina and Christopher Sawicki.
“Hopefully, this is the start and beginning of justice being served for our baby girl who wasn’t properly taken care of in the care of Jaimee,” Christina Sawicki said Friday. “We trusted Jaimee with our daughter and now she is no longer here because she didn’t want to disturb her and not strap her in properly. Now we live with this pain and emptiness for the rest of our lives all because she didn’t want her to wake up.”
Alivia was the youngest child of the young Woodbury Heights, New Jersey, couple — their “little angel.” She was a bubbly girl who loved to be cuddled until she fell asleep, her mom said. She loved her older brother. She loved to dance. She loved the water. She loved her binky and her blankey. She loved her car seat.
The couple has flooded their Facebook pages with pictures of their happy daughter and her family. Recently, Christopher memorialized his daughter’s face in ink on a forearm. Their son has nightmares. He doesn’t want to spend the night away from his parents, his mother said.
“It’s tough. It’s really hitting my wife and son when I’m not here,” Christopher Sawicki said. “The pain we go through every minute of the day without her. Seeing other children her age breaks our heart and our son is devastated and is in shock til this day. We want justice.”
In an interview, the Sawickis said authorities had provided them little information about the investigation. The couple did not know a child welfare review of the death existed until this news organization told them, they said.
A day care emergency is how the family ended up placing their two children with Gorman, who has three school-age children.
Alivia and her 3-year-old brother had been enrolled in a licensed day care center, but when it suddenly closed in December 2016, Christina Sawicki posted the news on social media and Gorman reached out to her. Gorman told her she watched a few children and offered to take in Alivia and her brother, according to the couple.
Christina Sawicki felt comfortable about the arrangement because she knew Gorman from high school and had developed a friendship in recent years. Gorman charged them $225 a week for the two kids, Christopher Sawicki said.
Nothing about the Bristol Township house where Gorman lived and watched the children struck Christopher Sawicki as unusual, except the number of kids there.
“When we first went there, there wasn’t as many kids, but slowly, but surely, we’d see more and more kids,” he said.
Christopher Sawicki recalled seeing as many as five children, not including Gorman’s children and a teen relative, when he dropped off and picked up his children. Christina Sawicki knew of at least six toddlers and preschool-age kids, plus a few older children Gorman watched before and after school.
‘We told her not to do it’
Pennsylvania law requires state licensing for child care businesses serving four or more children at one time who are not related to the provider. Licensed child care providers also must abide by regulations including unannounced annual inspections, mandatory ongoing staff training, criminal and child abuse background checks and strict child-to-adult ratios. Child care providers serving fewer than four children are not required to be licensed.
Gorman sometimes watched as many as 13 children a day, though children were dropped off and picked up at various times, according to the death review, which was released only after this news organization requested a copy from Bucks County Children and Youth in January. State law requires county and state child welfare agencies to conduct the reviews when a child dies or nearly dies and abuse is suspected.
According to the report, which has redacted portions, Alivia was put down for a nap in a car seat around noon in an upstairs bedroom, but woke up less than two hours later. The baby sitter rocked her back to sleep while still in the car seat. The safety restraints were buckled on her chest and only one leg because Alivia was sleeping on the other leg, according to the report.
Around 3 p.m., the teenage relative found Alivia unresponsive in the car seat and yelled to an unidentified person. An unidentified person came upstairs, took the girl out of the car seat, ran downstairs and then outside, while yelling for someone to call 911, the report said. CPR was performed on the girl until first responders arrived and took over.
An autopsy determined the death was the result of neck compression from the chest clip while Alivia was sleeping in a forward-tilted car seat on the floor, according to the death review.
The report noted that Alivia reportedly had a habit of kicking her legs to rock herself in the car seat and she often rocked in her seat after she woke from a nap. An unidentified person told the review team that she could usually hear the toddler rocking in the car seat when she was downstairs, but heard nothing the day of her death.
Gorman is not identified in the report, which refers to a baby sitter, and it did not mention whether any children in her care were family members.
Gorman told police she put the girl in a removable car carrier and strapped her in, as she had in the past, for a nap.
The Sawickis said Gorman told them she was in the basement doing laundry when Alivia was napping on the second floor the day she died. Alivia preferred sleeping in the car seat over a crib or portable playpen, but the couple said that they warned Gorman not to leave her unsupervised in one.
“We told her not to do it, not to put her in the car seat because she rocks it,” Christopher Sawicki said.
“Apparently she was left in the car seat pretty much all the time and we never knew that,” Christina Sawicki added.
The Sawickis said they don’t know why authorities thought they were related to Gorman. Christina Sawicki maintains she told Bristol Township police multiple times the day of her daughter’s death that Gorman was only a family acquaintance. This news organization was unsuccessful in reaching Bristol Township Police Lt. Ralph Johnson in multiple text and voicemail messages and emails for comment on the investigation.
Bucks County Children and Youth Executive Director Lynne Kallus-Rainey, whose agency oversees local child death and near-death reviews, confirmed a county caseworker reviewing the case notified the state’s licensing board about the child care activities in the home. The number of children in the baby sitter’s care was discussed in the review team meetings, and a DHS official suggested that the licensing agency may not have followed up because most of the children were “family and friends,” Kallus-Rainey said.
“Licensing dropped the ball,” she added.
A DHS spokesman confirmed there is no record of a licensed family home child care business operating out of the Bristol Township home where Gorman lived and watched children at the time. Agency investigators twice visited the home after Alivia’s death, but found the family had moved and left no forwarding address, spokesman Colin Day said.
“During the department’s investigation, local authorities informed DHS the deceased child was the niece of the caregiver and the rest of the children in the care at the time of the incident were related to the caregiver as well,” Day said. “Based upon statute, providing care to relatives does not require the caregiver to be a licensed facility.”
‘Everything under control’
Another parent who said that Gorman had watched her now-toddler age daughter since she was an infant confirmed she regularly watched at least six children during the school day and others before and after school and more during the summer. The woman asked to have her identity withheld.
Gorman came highly recommended as a child care provider, the woman said. She charged $25 a day, which was lower than other child care providers. Her house was always neat and appeared organized, the woman said. Sometimes Gorman had her mom watch the kids, if she had to leave the house, the woman said. During the summer, a teenage relative helped watch the children.
“She seemed to have everything under control,” the woman said.
Her daughter was among the children at the house the day Alivia died, the woman said. The girl is now enrolled in a licensed day care center, which costs more than what she was paying Gorman, the woman said. But it’s worth it because she sees a big difference in the quality of care and supervision, she said.
“This is what it’s supposed to be like,” she said.
- Child Care Centers are businesses that provide child care services to seven or more children unrelated to the operator. A child day care center must have a state-issued license from the Department of Human Services to operate. They must follow these regulations.
- Group Child Care Homes are businesses that provide child care services to seven to 12 children unrelated to the operator. A group day care home must have a state-issued license from the Department of Human Services to operate. They must follow these regulations.
- Family Child Care Homes are businesses that provide child care services to four to six children unrelated to the operator. A family care home must be located in a home and must have a state-issued license from the Department of Human Services to operate. They must follow these regulations.
You can find out if your child care provider is registered or licensed by visiting the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services’ Regional Child Care Information Centers web site. Nearly all counties have a free childcare information service. In Bucks County, the number is 800-371-2109.
