Baby Fight Club: Underground Toddler Battles Becoming A Real Issue?

Imagine sending your child to a daycare, a place where he or she will be safe while you are at work, only to find out later that you unwillingly enrolled your child into a baby fight club.

Parents in Virginia have experienced just that as they found out daycare employees at the Minnieland Academy forced their children to partake in a mini fight club and posted videos of the underground baby brawls on Snapchat, according to Metro.

The accused daycare employees were found out in late 2015 and the ringleader, Sarah Jordan, was convicted of leading the baby fight club. The 31-year-old former daycare worker dubbed the room, where toddlers were forced to fight, the “Monkey Room.”

The fights were much more than two toddlers simply smacking each other around to see who would fall on their behinds first. Instead, the forced battles were more akin to a dog fight as the daycare workers abused the children and demanded they continue the fight until the end. In addition to Sarah Jordan’s conviction, a second daycare worker, 26-year-old Kierra Spriggs, has been arrested in her part in the baby fight club, and is awaiting her sentencing after being convicted by a jury of her peers.

Spriggs’ methods of abuse are truly horrific, in her attempt to make the children angry and coerce further fighting among the children. In addition to forcing a pair of twin sisters to brutally fight each other, she force fed spicy Cheetos to a toddler, forcing her to grasp for her breath as the spicy coating invaded her senses. In another instance, Spriggs stepped on the toes of the children while laughing to induct pain upon those that did not want to partake in the fights. Other methods of inflicting pain included placing rubber bands on the arms of the children and snapping the rubber against their skin. When the children showed fear, Spriggs would also toss the toddlers into water.

The toddlers, most around 6-years-old, were forced to hit, bite, and and scratch each other as they fought. Parents were unaware of the baby fight club, but noticed that their children were afraid to go to daycare after a short time, making them wonder if something was happening.

Unfortunately, the baby fight club at the Minnieland Academy in Virginia is not an isolated case. According to the New York Post, the Lightbridge Academy in New Jersey also hosted a baby fight club, resulting in the conviction of 22-year-old Erica Kenny and 28-year-old Chanese White. The duo shared the baby fight videos onto Snapchat, where they referenced the movie Fight Club as their inspiration.

The prosecutor claimed that there were nearly a dozen children shown in the videos.

“Approximately a dozen boys and girls at the day care center can be seen in the video clips shoving each other to the ground and attempting to strike each other.”

The prosecutor also claimed that Kenny and White can be heard encouraging the children to fight.

“In the video clips, Kenny can be heard referencing the activity as ‘Fight Club’ — quoting from the book and movie of the same name in encouraging the children to engage each other physically.”

With the two baby fight clubs occurring and being discovered within months of one another, it raises the question, how many more are out there? Unfortunately, the two cases are not isolated incidents. Another baby fight club was discovered in 2014 in Dover, Delaware, where 41-year-old Lisa Parker and 21-year-old Estefania Myers were arrested on charges of running a baby fight club. In a video, Parker was heard coercing a child to keep quite about the incident at home, according to the Daily Caller.

“Timmy, we told you the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.”

The incidents of baby fight clubs raises the question, how many more are out there?

[Image via Alexey Borodin/Shutterstock]