Justice for the Children Abused at Miss Ann's Home Daycare (Laurel, Delaware)
This substack is intended to represent justice for any child in Delaware where they could not process the sexual abuse that happened to them as a child.
Hello everyone! In this substack post I’ll be naming who abused me as a child and where that abuse occurred. Naming one’s criminal perpetrator is not gossip.
I could not live in the community of Laurel, Delaware, and now I know why. That community is small, and this information will get out to others.
We all have dysfunction in our families, so please try to be sensitive to others as I expose. We all need Jesus, but what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong.
I have heard from the Lord, and I am being obedient to him. I have also been seeking my spiritual coach’s guidance. Now that the truth will be exposed, this will be a heavy weight lifting off my shoulders. I fully trust the Lord and wait for Him to mysteriously work.
On September 14, 2021, I shared my testimony with the Delaware Trial Lawyers Association (DTLA) against the Delaware state-licensed home daycare provider called Miss Ann’s Daycare.
I testified in detail to the decade-plus of abuse I and the other children who attended her daycare suffered while in her home facility. Physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse to children who ranged in age from infants to five years old or possibly older. These children also included foster children.
Because of my testimony, Representative Timothy Dukes told me that the DTLA is working to open a revival window, a period of time when survivors of abuse can file a civil complaint against the courts, as these perpetrators are now deceased. I am praying for this to happen in the 2024 session, and I also hope to gather more survivors of abuse for support in this next session.
I would love to see the statute eliminated completely, so victims and survivors of abuse could come forward at any time, so they do not have to go through what I have had to go through.
Representative Sean Lynn said they are working on a bill as well. They thought it would be finished in June of 2023, but unfortunately, that did not happen. Plans for the next session are hopeful, though. Please pray for that movement.
A few others have contacted me who were foster children raped in the systems and/or raped by Catholic priests in Delaware. This movement could help them as well. I also know others who were raped by doctors and nurses in our Delaware hospitals. This could give them the option to come forward as well, no matter the time frame.
This movement happened recently in Maryland. Please read and watch the heartfelt video from a survivor and attorney in Maryland attached in this link so you can understand the Science of Traumatology, and what this new legislation can do for survivors even though statistics state that 86% victims still do not come forward.
In my unfolding journey I can for sure understand why victims would not come forward or quit along the way. The perseverance I have had to have to get someone to believe and help me has been exhausting. Jesus Christ has been my rock. The whole system has been nothing but pushback and revictimization. I have continued to be ignored.
All I think about are all the children that have opened up to me in the classroom and the system does nothing for them and holds no one accountable. The enemy wants me to think that this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I have finally convinced myself and the enemy it is not. But I have chosen to inform the enemy to back off because what the enemy intended for evil, I have chosen to do God’s kingdom work (the good) and be the voice for the other survivors. The Lord keeps giving me strength. I am hoping and praying by doing this more connections to others needing healing will open a new door for them and close the other.
Miss Ann’s Daycare was run by Ann Lecates, on 6th Street in Laurel, Delaware. It was in operation in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The allegations at Miss Ann’s Daycare were against my perpetrator, Roy Lecates, her husband.
Laurel is a small town. If you’re from there, either you or your parents will recall these people.
However, these allegations were swept under the carpet with the technical term Noelle prosequi (“will no longer prosecute”). It amounts to the prosecution simply dismissing the charges.
With the help of an attorney, I was able to retrieve an archived document. Though there was no way to prepare myself for it emotionally, reading it helped me know I was not crazy to have all those memories coming back in my 40s. These feelings of “crazy” actually made sense as I realized I was finding clues to my lost past.
From this document I was able to see that the systems in place in Delaware were more worried about protecting their own institutions than protecting children. They are built to protect the criminals.
In this document I saw the names of other children who had made allegations of abuse against Roy LeCates.
After that, the courts would not allow my attorney to unseal another archived document on this perpetrator. I can only assume this means more allegations.
This same stonewalling has happened to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Earl Bradley. The systems continue to protect the criminals while they ignore, shame, blame, accuse, push back against, and revictimize the victims.
It gets to be exhausting, but the Lord keeps giving me strength.
Roy LeCates was arrested and let go within a day.
After decades of abuse of the many, many children “Miss Ann” was entrusted to care for in her daycare, all she lost was the use of her daycare. From what I read, the state did not even come in and shut it down. She shut it down on her own two weeks after the allegations.
I know very personally that the children abused at this Delaware state-licensed daycare have lost far more than that…
You will not find any articles about the abuses at Miss Ann’s Daycare.
You will not find any obituaries for the abuser Roy LeCates. My attorney had to have that researched. I did find out if I remember correctly, he passed away in 1995 from a brain aneurysm in Nanticoke Memorial Hospital.
Here is the obituary for the daycare owner: Obituary information for Ann W. LeCates (hsdfuneralhome.com)
Ann LeCates’ obituary states that she was open for business for thirty years. I know there are far more survivors of “Miss Ann’s Daycare” than just the few I know about. And I know some that are no longer here. I am fighting for them as well and their families.
The state protects the institutions and organizations. I have found this to be the case with my own unfolding journey as an abuse survivor, as an advocate, and even as a teacher.
The pastor named in the obituary who officiated Miss Ann’s funeral is related to the perpetrator. I reached out to him to see if he could help me bring any kind of healing and deliverance to the community and his family. But he wanted no part of it.
This is an example of why people do not trust the church.
I have no regrets naming my perpetrator, but it has taken me a while to even get to this point, partly because of the perpetrator’s family members who are still living. The family institution is the most hidden when it comes to this evil, and then the institutions and organizations. My guess is this family most likely needs healing as well.
Also, the other survivors of his abuse may not be ready to feel their feelings and uncover what happened to them as children.
But the truth is, until we uncover those repressed memories, I have found we continue to suppress, disassociate, and experience the trauma in other ways, unable to handle triggers within our nervous system.
Healing is hard! But it is so worth it, and I have met many other good people along the way.
Many children attended Miss Ann’s Daycare in Laurel, Delaware, and because the brain dissociates and suppresses traumatic memories, many of those who were abused may not yet know that they were. However, our bodies always keep the score, and the poison inflicted on us as children comes out in ways other than normal “memories.”
I, along with many other children, experienced abuse in “Miss Ann’s Daycare”, but I didn’t remember it. I had a common phenomenon called “traumatic amnesia”. My memories of abuse were disconnected from me until I experienced a “trigger” that unlocked that sealed vault in my brain.
I want to help others understand how common traumatic amnesia is, and how we should listen to those who are only now recovering the truth about what happened to them. I hope by writing and sharing my unfolding journey, some of you can be helped or you can help others that you know have been sexually abused. This is an epidemic.
I also hope that laws will be created based on an understanding of the effects of trauma on a child’s brain.
If the perpetrator’s family members were sexually abused as children, they could most likely file a complaint with the court if this bill is passed, because the state did not protect them either.
Please share this post to any folks of the Laurel, Delmar, Seaford, Bridgeville, and Greenwood areas. I have a deep desire to find and notify other survivors of abuse at Miss Ann’s Daycare, or anywhere else for that matter. When I was little, I could not help myself, let alone help them, but I want to do something now.
If you’re a survivor of abuse at Miss Ann’s Daycare, email me and let’s talk. (Please do not contact my personal family members. People choose to heal differently, and we all have our own paths of healing.)
I would love for other survivors to join me in supporting the policy. This could help any survivors who were ever abused in an institution or organization and are ready to come forward where their abuse could have happened before 2010.
I can also be used as a tool in helping them find the right connections in doing so through the justice system since I have already been through it. And what a painful experience that was.
My healing and deliverance are advocating in public policy for those children who were sexually abused with me where their innocence was stolen. I would love to connect with them and get them to connect with me even as a “Jane Doe” or “John Doe”. I am going to be their voice and have been.
A lot of people take this to their grave, and suffer in silence. Our bodies hold the score and that toxicity. I choose to disclose, be healed and delivered, and help others if they want it. We all have dysfunctions and generational curses in our families, but one person can put a stop to it. A lot of times the Lord uses our pain for his kingdom!
In my next substack, I will post my child and the other children’s perpetrator and my first campaign event I attended.
In the meantime, please reach out through email if you have questions or thoughts that keep coming back to you. That just might be the Holy Spirit!
Blessings!
Wendy