VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Brittany Pina has a unique perspective of what was going on in the Wave Children’s Learning Center, not only as the mother of a child there, but also, she taught at the facility.
Pina, who taught at the Learning Center and had a daughter, Marley Pina-Watson, who attended the school when she was 18-months-old, said her daughter began having health issues that prompted Pina to take her daughter to Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.
“Marley wouldn’t close her mouth,” Pina said about her daughter. “So at that point, we had to go to CHKD. Unfortunately, we were there for about a week. An oral surgeon came in and they told me that her jaw was dislocated.”
Pina confronted the teacher.
“I asked, ‘Did you touch my child?’ I asked her plenty of times, and she said she didn’t do anything,” Pina said. “It doesn’t make sense because I didn’t drop Marley off at school in that condition. So why are you returning her to me within an hour, and she has a dislocated jaw?”
Brittany said Child Protective Services came out, and so did Virginia Beach Police, but no charges were filed.
“The police, they asked me a couple of questions because the school tried to tell me I brought Marley to school like that,” Pina said, “but I had photos to prove otherwise.”
Making matters worse, Brittany was a teacher at the Learning Center.
“It got bad — they would call me out for being a few minutes late, … then, as things got worse and my daughter wasn’t able to return to school, I ended up losing my job from it. Marley and I just were kind of sent home and that was the end of the story. I was never told what happened with the teacher that was involved. They just kind of swept it under the rug.”
10 On Your Side reached out to Wave Church for comment, but did not get a reply.
Pina has been following WAVY’s coverage of the Wave Children’s Learning Center.
“I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me to tell me, ‘Hey, I remember your story from 2019. I think you should really share this with me,'” Pina said. “But I think it’s also opening up a cloud for other parents to feel comfortable to talk about what was going on.”
10 On Your Side has been told cameras were everywhere in the Learning Center. Pina wanted to see them.
“There were cameras in the hallway at that time,” Pina said. “Nobody would provide any of the footage to me because, again, I was treated at that time as a parent, and they didn’t want me to see the other kids in the classroom, although I knew them all.”
Pina claims she asked about what happened to her child, but no one helped explain what happened to Marley.
“She was hurt in that school, and they did nothing about it,” Pina said.
Pina said what has led to most of the issues over the years at the Learning Center deal with lack of proper training.
“I think that is the biggest issue is that the staff is not trained properly,” Pina said. “There has to be proper protocol for handling other people’s children. We are dropping off our kids to strangers we do not necessarily know.”
As for Marley, now 8, Pina said she will likely need corrective surgery to align her jaw.
