Muskogee Daycare Employee Arrested On Child Abuse Complaint

Tuesday, August 13th 2019, 12:35 pm

By: News On 6

A Muskogee daycare employee is behind bars after police arrested her on complaints of child neglect and child abuse.

Officers arrested Oak Tree Academy employee Rebecca Isham Monday evening after they saw surveillance video and determined she'd "mishandled" one of the children.

It's an incident that comes as no surprise to Muskogee mom Emily Langone.

"They're still doing the same things that happened years prior," Langone said. "So it wasn't super surprising, it's just frustrating that it's still happening."

Langone said her two younger children went to Oak Tree until last year. She said her concerns began when her infant daughter continued to get extremely sick.

"At one point, she had RSV and three common cold viruses," Langone said.

She said the director told her no other children had RSV, but Langone said a teacher later told her that wasn't true.

"That's kind of where the mistrust started, and the dishonesty," she said.

Langone said other teachers told her employees were being "rough" with her daughter, so she pulled her kids out of the daycare, and reported Oak Tree to DHS.

"They have all these systems in place that are supposed to protect kids and they're supposed to be there," she said.

In a Facebook post, the victim's mom says Isham grabbed her daughter's face, and told her to be quiet. In the post, the mom said Isham then forced her daughter to the ground and wrapped a blanket around her head.



Muskogee Police said DHS is investigating, and there could be more victims involved.

"At this time, there's possibly three victims," Officer Jeramie Garcia said.

The DA's office is still investigating too; they'll decide whether or not to file charges against Isham in the case.

The director at Oak Tree told News On 6 they had no comment because the investigation is ongoing.