A nursery school teacher is under criminal investigation after harrowing CCTV footage showed her ‘beating two year old children’ in her care.
The teacher – named as Zhanel Musken, 29 – hit and slapped the infants, pulled their hair, shook and pushed them, and roughly changed their clothes, it is alleged.
A total of 15 suffered injuries, revealed Saule Shakeneva, the regional children’s rights commissioner in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan.
‘The number of children may well increase,’ she warned.
The teacher was suspended after distraught parents complained to police.
Footage of the alleged abuse was then seized by police from Kindergarten Number 116 in Pavlodar.
It shows fear on the faces of children as the teacher conducted her alleged reign of terror in the classroom.
She faces a possible jail sentence if convicted of abusing the infants.
In one terrifying instance, the woman aggressively shakes one child’s head continuously before yanking them to the ground.
Another disturbing scene shows her pulling a boy’s ears and screaming at him as the scared boy tries to avoid her gaze.
She violently pulls off other kids’ outfits, forcefully pulls their arms, and hits their midsection as their frightened friends look on.
Further footage sees her vigorously grab a boy’s feet as he tumbles on the floor, hitting his head.
‘Most of the children are too young to speak properly yet,’ said a local report citing Shakeneva.
Yet some parents were concerned by bruises and the behaviour of their children.
‘The children were assigned a forensic medical examination, and the parents and children were offered psychological help,’ said the report.
The teacher was reported to be experienced, with ten years working in nursery schools, and was seen as caring before the scandal was revealed.
Khava Bolkoyeva, aunt of an ‘abused’ child, told local TV: ‘She hit [my niece] on the head, on the back, threw her around, as if she wasn’t a real person but some kind of toy.
‘She has almost no hair because it was constantly being pulled.
‘There are bruises on her body and she constantly complains about her stomach. Maybe she throws her around, hits her.
‘We were at the examination this morning. Now we have written to the prosecutor’s office and we are going to a lawyer. We want to see this case through to the end.’
She added: ‘This is a video of just one day. And she does all this without fear of the cameras.
‘It is scary to imagine how often she allowed herself such violence.’
The teacher could face charges of ‘failure to fulfil the duties of raising a minor by the person to whom they are assigned’.
But parents want to see children abuse laws used against the teacher for the alleged beatings.