A veteran childcare employee allegedly spent weeks drugging other people's children without permission, and parents are understandably furious.
Authorities in Neenah, Wisconsin, charged a longtime YMCA daycare worker with child neglect after she allegedly gave melatonin gummies to at least 10 toddlers without their parents' permission, The Daily Caller reported.
Annalee Salas Nitz faces one misdemeanor count of neglecting a child, where specified harm did not occur, in connection with alleged dosing that stretched from Aug. 31 to Oct. 14. The woman had worked at the Neenah-Menasha YMCA Child Development Center for nearly 15 years, presumably building trust with families before allegedly betraying it completely.
Another Employee's Observation Triggers Investigation Into Suspicious Behavior
The chief operations officer at the YMCA center called police Oct. 16 after another employee reported witnessing disturbing behavior. That worker saw Nitz pull a child's pacifier out, place something in the child's mouth, and put the pacifier back in.
Days later, the same employee discovered a small red gummy on the infant room floor and a bottle labeled "Kids' melatonin" in a cabinet near the nap area. That storage violated YMCA policy, which apparently exists for excellent reasons that Nitz chose to ignore.
Investigators reviewed surveillance footage that showed Nitz repeatedly putting unknown items into children's mouths, though the video quality wasn't clear enough to distinguish gummies from something like raisins. Still, combined with the physical evidence and parent reports, the pattern became unmistakable.
Parents Report Children Seemed Unusually Lethargic After Care
Neenah police contacted 10 sets of parents whose children were in Nitz's care. Not a single family had authorized melatonin for their children, and several reported their kids had recently seemed unusually lethargic.
"We don't trust anyone anymore," father Joe Boersma said after learning his young son was allegedly given the sleep aid at the center. That's the kind of profound betrayal that doesn't heal quickly—parents entrust strangers with their most precious responsibility, only to discover those strangers were secretly medicating their toddlers.
The fact that multiple parents noticed unusual lethargy in their children suggests this wasn't some harmless oversight. These were behavioral changes significant enough for parents to observe, caused by unauthorized substances administered by someone paid to protect their kids.
Suspect Admits Scheme Was Planned During Police Interview
During a Nov. 11 interview, Nitz allegedly made stunning admissions to detectives. She confessed to slipping melatonin to poor sleepers—sometimes mixing it into food—without parental consent and acknowledged she might have given it to every child in the room over several months.
"I'm guilty of it," she told detectives, calling the scheme "planned" but a "bad choice" and a "very painful and humbling lesson." At least she's honest about the planning part—this wasn't a momentary lapse in judgment but a deliberate, sustained deception.
If convicted, Nitz faces up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine. She's scheduled for an initial court appearance Jan. 6, where she'll answer for allegedly drugging children whose parents thought naptime struggles were just normal toddler behavior.
Case Raises Serious Questions About Daycare Oversight
The criminal complaint reveals a systematic pattern of behavior that went undetected for weeks, raising uncomfortable questions about supervision and accountability at childcare facilities. How does someone administer unauthorized medication to multiple children over more than a month without detection?
Surveillance cameras ultimately helped build the case, though they weren't positioned or calibrated well enough to capture definitive evidence without corroborating physical findings. That's a reminder that security systems are only as effective as their implementation and the policies backing them up.
This case epitomizes every parent's nightmare—the realization that someone entrusted with childcare was secretly making medical decisions without consent. Melatonin may be available over the counter, but that doesn't give daycare workers authority to dose other people's children like they're administering goldfish crackers at snack time.
