CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A former daycare worker who beat a 2-year-old boy with a backscratcher last year was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison.

Common Pleas Judge Kathleen Sutula called Melissa Tate a "monster" who preyed on children at the Wednesday hearing, before ordering the 49-year-old Tate to serve the maximum prison sentence on child endangering charges.

Video cameras inside the daycare captured Tate striking the 2-year-old more than 20 times with a backscratcher on Oct. 17, after the boy struck another child with a toy, police said.

Tate then grabbed the boy by his leg and threw him onto a changing table, police said.

The boy's mother noticed bruises on his legs when she picked him up, and she confronted the daycare.

Tate was immediately fired, and detectives got an arrest warrant charging her with child endangering two days later.

Tate pleaded guilty to the same charge last month.

Another worker is charged with misdemeanor child endangering in the case. She is accused of not intervening to stop the abuse.

Her case is scheduled to go to trial May 16.

The boy is not the happy child he was before he was abused, his mother said after the sentencing. She takes him to counseling as a result of the emotional trauma, she said.

"I feel like she robbed him of his childhood," the child's mother said.

The mother, who wore a T-shirt that read "Stop Child Abuse," said she was pleased with the sentence, but she hopes that daycares will conduct more screening of their employees.

"Justice for (my son) has definitely been served," she said.