Just For The Record......

The thread has been closed to comment. I think we all know which thread I am talking about. Anyway, I want to make it clear that a dcparent coming on to a PUBLIC site and saying negative, defamatory things is not considered a "review" or "free-speech". According to Canadian Law (and taken from the Canada Law Society):

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What is defamation?

Defamation is communication about a person that tends to hurt the person's reputation. Defamation is a strict liability tort, which means that the intentions of the defamer are not relevant. The communication must be made to other people, not just to the person it's about. The statement must be false to be classified as defamation. If it is spoken, then defamation is termed “slander". If it is written, it is termed “libel”. It can also be a gesture, which is a type of slander.

The law protects your reputation against defamation. If someone defames you, you can sue them to pay money (called “damages”) for harming your reputation. You have to sue in Supreme Court, not Provincial Court, and you have to sue within 2 years of the defamation. It is not relevant the timing of when you discovered the defamation. Rather, the limitation period commences on the date the defamatory statement was made or published. For more on the court system, check script 432, called “Our Court System and Solving Disputes.”

The law doesn't protect you from a personal insult or a remark that injures only your pride; it protects reputation, not feelings. So if someone calls you a lazy slob, you might be hurt, but you probably don't have a good reason to sue. If he goes on to say you cheat in your business dealings, you probably do have a good reason to sue, as long as he says it to someone else, not just to you. If he says it only to you, you can't sue because he has not hurt your reputation.

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As providers we need to start standing up to parents who go out on a limb to purposely hurt our livelihood. We ALL know that the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle and NO parent, regardless of how upset they are, has the RIGHT to publicly defame a provider. If the problems incurred at a daycare were THAT bad then there are proper authoritative entities to contact and report to. Taking grievances to a public forum is ILLEGAL. And as providers we need to start tagging parents for doing this. They do it because we LET them do it. We need to stop being pushovers.

It's NOT okay.

Here is the issue- "Must be false"

How do we know if the problems were false or not?
We all know that kids get colds (as do adults), the get diaper rashes, and they get dirty (playing is hard work!)

It is not illegal to post what actually happened as she perceived it too. Someone withdrew her kid from a daycare because she got diaper rashes and posted about it? Fine. As long as the rashes actually happened it is not slander or libel or defamation.

Same goes for colds or being dirty. If it actually happened its not defamation.

Yes Judy THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Free speech? So you're telling me that if someone posts a one sided bad review of my dc using my business name that it will be left up???? Because they did not use my first and last name?? Its not like term'ed parents or some that leave do not have an axe to grind!!

That was not free speech, that was a post intending to hurt this lady and her livelyhood, and because you allowed (mod) her post to remain up, I am not sure if I can enjoy this site anymore...

I agree 100% with Judy, and I strongly feel that the moderators of this forum should edit and remove all references to the specific daycare name from the review/defamation post.

When the daycare name is searched/googled online, these threads are coming up on the first page, and that is shameful. Moderators, do the right thing and remove the daycare name from the posts. Locking the posts or closing them to comments while leaving them publicly viewable is NOT a "solution".

I will also add that IF the daycare provider and owner of this business chooses to pursue her legal options against this parent, AND daycarebear, I will support her in any way I can, by providing my recollections as someone who followed the whole thing closely and saved COPIES of every post in the thread.

Remove the daycare business name!

WE do not know if it is false or not, BUT the provider in question DOES know. If these claims are indeed false as it would appear, then she has a case and can sue if she has documented these posts. It may be hard to prove though...how is the judge going to know for sure who is telling the truth? Unfortunately, I am sure there are all kind of "reviews" out there of businesses (using the name of the business) that may or may not be "true" or may be just one point of view. I don't think it is illegal to post reviews online of businesses. I hope that parents who have read the thread will also have read the provider's eloquent post and can decide for themselves...go and meet the provider...call her references, etc.

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Originally Posted by mamaof4

Here is the issue- "Must be false"

How do we know if the problems were false or not?
We all know that kids get colds (as do adults), the get diaper rashes, and they get dirty (playing is hard work!)

It is not illegal to post what actually happened as she perceived it too. Someone withdrew her kid from a daycare because she got diaper rashes and posted about it? Fine. As long as the rashes actually happened it is not slander or libel or defamation.

Same goes for colds or being dirty. If it actually happened its not defamation.

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If it is posted in the forum- I am able to edit and delete things- anywhere else on the site is beyond my control..

Prior to this incident, we did not have a policy on naming names- obviously now we are working on one that will protect both sides- providers and parents. When it is finished we will post it as an announcement to the board as a whole.

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Originally Posted by mamaof4

Here is the issue- "Must be false"

How do we know if the problems were false or not?
We all know that kids get colds (as do adults), the get diaper rashes, and they get dirty (playing is hard work!)




It is not illegal to post what actually happened as she perceived it too. Someone withdrew her kid from a daycare because she got diaper rashes and posted about it? Fine. As long as the rashes actually happened it is not slander or libel or defamation.

Same goes for colds or being dirty. If it actually happened its not defamation.

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just because the provider came on and said all those things doesn't mean she's telling the truth either. There are threads every day about how bad parents are, heck there is one about diapers right now. There are bad providers too, they look and sound all nice on the outside but when the doors close its a different story.
also, maybe the mom was frustrated we DON'T KNOW. I can't believe how many providers ASSUMED that the mother was wrong. We were not there at the interview, we don't know what is in the contract either.
Yes we need to stand up for what we do, but in this situation there are way too many missing parts.

We do have copies as well from every edit made to posts.

The name of the dayhome was removed from the thread title.

While I am with you on the not jumping to conclusions one way or another, I do have to say it is different when providers complain about parents because I have NEVER seen any of them use a parent or a child's name on the forum...and I am sure it would have been removed if they had.

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Originally Posted by momofnerds

just because the provider came on and said all those things doesn't mean she's telling the truth either. There are threads every day about how bad parents are, heck there is one about diapers right now. There are bad providers too, they look and sound all nice on the outside but when the doors close its a different story.
also, maybe the mom was frustrated we DON'T KNOW. I can't believe how many providers ASSUMED that the mother was wrong. We were not there at the interview, we don't know what is in the contract either.
Yes we need to stand up for what we do, but in this situation there are way too many missing parts.

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Originally Posted by mamaof4

We do have copies as well from every edit made to posts.

The name of the dayhome was removed from the thread title.

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That is a start, but I don't think removing it only from the title is enough to make it disappear from google/yahoo searches. Removing the name from each post where it appears would accomplish it though.

I am afraid that it is too late to remove the name, the damage has been done. It should never have been shown in the first place.

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Originally Posted by sunnydays

While I am with you on the not jumping to conclusions one way or another, I do have to say it is different when providers complain about parents because I have NEVER seen any of them use a parent or a child's name on the forum...and I am sure it would have been removed if they had.

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Exactly this. But if some people would like it to remain open season here on daycarebear to slander providers by naming their business but not their first and last names (as that being the only no-no)... then how about if providers start posting "reviews" of parents who skip out without notice, or pay late, or pick up their children late, or any number of the other things some parents pull, and we will stick to the "no first and last names", but we will provide every other identifying detail that we possibly can, including city, hours needed, mom and dad's type of employment, child age, type of car they drive... whatever it takes to give providers in that city a heads up to watch for that family without "first/last naming" them. Fair?

Posts (and post titles) are not approved by a mod when they are posted. Meaning - even if we had had a policy regarding naming names and someone posted a thread violation of the policy it would be viewable until a mod was able to remove it.

I cannot go in an edit what an individual says- I can edit titles and delete the post as a whole, editing the body of a post is something that the original poster can to.

All posts containing the dayhome's name have been removed with the exception of her response and the her post that linked to her response in the original thread.

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Originally Posted by jammiesandtea

Exactly this. But if some people would like it to remain open season here on daycarebear to slander providers by naming their business but not their first and last names (as that being the only no-no)... then how about if providers start posting "reviews" of parents who skip out without notice, or pay late, or pick up their children late, or any number of the other things some parents pull, and we will stick to the "no first and last names", but we will provide every other identifying detail that we possibly can, including city, hours needed, mom and dad's type of employment, child age, type of car they drive... whatever it takes to give providers in that city a heads up to watch for that family without "first/last naming" them. Fair?

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As previously stated- the business name was named not the owner operator and we did not have a policy on naming names.

You guys were already taking the high road and being responsible- we had no need for such policy, now clearly things have changed and one will be made and posted

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Originally Posted by mamaof4

Here is the issue- "Must be false"

How do we know if the problems were false or not?
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Well, that's a BIG gamble to take assuming it to be true, isn't it? If you assume it to be true and leave it there and the providers sues daycarebear WILL be named in the suit. Big, big, STUPID gamble. Besides, I stand by the point that if this were a provider naming a PARENT that thread would have been deleted from the get go. There would be no mention of "maybe the provider is telling the truth". Nope, it would have been deleted.

I think it all comes down to intention. The parent did not post a question asking how often kids should be changed to avoid diaper rash, how common was getting diaper rash in care (besides very common when they start at 12 months and are heavy into teething), how often did kids just starting care get sick,.....etc.

These questions we could have answered for the parent and then they could have made up their own mind if the care situation they had was a good one or a bad one. Just as providers we ask a question if what a child in our care is doing is ok/normal or whatever before we decide to tolerate the behaviour, work on changing it or terminating the child.

The sole purpose of the post was to defame the daycare and that is where the problem is in my opinion. The forum is about sharing when something good is happening and asking for help when we encounter difficulty. It is a support group not a soap box.

I am extremely sensitive to these kinds of posts since a disgruntled daycare mother posted defamatory comments about my home daycare on a Facebook group that has 2000+ members. I am very pleased to see that the thread in question has been shut down.

I don't think people realize the potential damage they can do to a person's life for the sake of revenge. In my case, the mom was angry about a money dispute. She questioned my quality of care. I know that many, many mothers saw what she wrote, and I am sure that even if I had defended and refuted everything, some of the mothers either wouldn't believe me, or they would still have negative connotations when they heard my name. That doesn't go away with an apology or a rebuttal. It's a permanent stigma.

I am still mulling over whether I should sue in my situation. The woman who made the remarks about me outright lied, and I have emails and text messages to prove that she lied.

You have the proof Sandbox Sally? Then I would go for it.

I have proof, yep.

She lied about ages of kids in my care. That's easily proven.

She said that I made inappropriate comments about her husband. I have every email and text message we ever sent. All I said about her husband was that I didn't want him coming over to confront me about the money dispute when I was home alone with the children.

She said that I didn't give her notice about her son's behaviour issues. I have text messages and emails that say otherwise.

She said that I stopped posting menus. I changed the format, but I still posted the menus, and I can prove it.

It goes on and on. I don't know what's stopping me from suing her. I guess at the end of the day, I kind of feel sorry for her because she's got a lot working against her.

She said that I didn't take the children outside (I have an email where she states how grateful and pleased she is about how much I take her son outside, dated four weeks before she sent out the defamatory document)