Main Street News

Content warning: The contents of this article deal with child abuse and may be difficult to read. 

When Kate Kuykendall, a Pine Plains, NY native, picked her youngest daughter, Bella, up from her first day at the Ford Island Child Development Center near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, she assumed Bella was having a mild case of separation anxiety. 

Kate had recently returned to work and was told that separation anxiety was common. While she felt in her gut that something was truly wrong, she assumed that if anything had happened at the daycare that she or her husband Jeremy, an intelligence officer for the US Army, would be notified. But what Bella was experiencing at daycare was not a case of separation anxiety at all.

Bella was only allowed to attend the daycare for 21 hours per week, as she didn’t have a spot yet and was considered an hourly care baby. The Kuykendalls chose to do the first three days of the week, and after those three days, the 15-month old Bella was not faring any better. Her face was red and patchy and her voice hoarse from crying, and Kate said that she lost her appetite. 

On Thursday night, Kate noticed the distinct pinch mark bruise on Bella’s thigh. 

A report from Military.com titled “Unsupervised: Military Child Care Centers Slow to Report Abuse with Little Oversight” states that, “Later, [Kate] would find out that her daughter’s cheeks weren’t just red and swollen from crying – a daycare worker had shoved a photo of Bella’s parents into her face so hard that her little head had turned away a full 90 degrees as a second worker held her.” 

The Military.com report also states that, “CCTV footage from the daycare center – that was checked only after Kate and Jeremy requested a review – later revealed that Bella had been physically abused by at least two of the workers. She was pinched, shoved, smothered, and pushed up against a wall.”

Bella was handled so roughly by two of the daycare workers that her pediatrician believed that she suffered a concussion in addition to the physical bruises and marks, and emotional damage that her three-day period at the daycare caused. 

What ensued was not accountability, but instead, a seemingly never-ending fight for the Kuykendalls to get justice for the abuse that Bella suffered at the hands of the daycare workers. 

The Military.com report states, “No official police or command reports were filed on the day law enforcement responded to the first report of potential abuse. The day care failed to properly document the injuries or to tell the parents the full scope of what happened, aside from the story that Bella had been crying. It was only after more than a year that two of the three workers allegedly responsible for abuse were charged in a civilian court. Two of the workers involved were allowed to keep working for five months before one was fired and the other quit.”

It took nearly three years for the Kuykendalls to get their hands on the video footage that showed the daycare workers abusing Bella, and yet the case was closed in just three short months after the incident took place. The footage shows one of the workers, Analyn DeGuzman, striking Bella’s head and then smothering her. The Kuykendalls have posted the footage on their Facebook page, Operation Mei Mei, which they are using as a vehicle to share Bella’s story and advocate for changes to military daycare centers. 

Pursuing legal action

Immediately following the incident, the Kuykendalls asked the daycare center director to review the footage from Bella’s time at the center. A report compiled by the Kuykendalls about the timeline of Bella’s abuse states that “the CDC director updated them in the afternoon of abuse found in footage. While initially receptive, the CDC quickly shut down messaging and transparency when [Bella’s] mother came to the facility with installation police (aka military or base police).”

Jeremy was stationed in the Philippines at the time of the incidents, so it wasn’t until “numerous inquiries were made” that a time was set up to review the footage that was provided by the daycare center. 

At the footage review in September of 2022, Kate states that “it was apparent that there was no active criminal investigation and that there was no assumption to have one by the Navy’s part (which facilitated the meeting with intent to show the few pinch actions that the CDC was claiming was the extent of damage to [Bella]).” However, after reviewing the footage, Kate notes that “that demeanor changed,” and the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps (the legal arm of the US Navy) notified Kate and Jeremy the following day that an investigation was started.

However, despite the notification of an investigation, Kate and Jeremy wouldn’t get a “meaningful” update about the investigation for weeks. The Honolulu Police Department declined the case on August 26, but the Kuykendalls note that they were told it was an active investigation the entire time. At a meeting on October 6th of 2022, Kate and Jeremy were informed that the Navy turned the case over to the Honolulu Police Department, who would then be in charge of handling a criminal investigation. 

The Kuykendalls would go on to have a meeting with a detective from the Honolulu Police Department on October 7th – the Friday before Columbus Day weekend – and the detective’s supervisor would then go on to call the Kuykendalls on Thursday, October 13, to inform them that the case was closed. 

In the Kuykendall’s timeline, they note that the HPD police report was labeled as a “‘miscellaneous publication’ and declared on page 4 that the detective was unable to find incidents that appeared to cause intentional harm to [Bella].” 

“They failed to identify three suspects and multiple children being abused. Two of the three suspects continued working for months,” Kate said. 

Fighting to see the footage of their daughter’s abuse 

The Kuykendalls submitted a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request in September of 2022, for which they were denied due to ongoing investigations associated with the footage. Once the criminal case closed, however, the Navy granted approval to the request – with caveats. 

The Kuykendall’s timeline states, “The main caveat was that the hours of footage had to be edited to protect the other children in the footage, and that this was a significant cost to be borne by the parents. In order to reduce the costs to a reasonable level, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam FOIA agreed to allow [Bella’s] parents to review the footage and narrow the scope of the request to specifically the abusive acts in question.”

In January of 2023, Jeremy started reviewing all three days of video footage. It took him three months to review the 75 hours worth of footage while also balancing work and home life. “He quickly discovered the abuse and neglect of our daughter was nonstop and progressively got worse each day of care,” Kate shared. The Kuykendalls reviewed the main incidents and built a comprehensive timeline of actions. This completed timeline was released to the Army’s Installation Command and the Honolulu Police Department. 

“Despite the acknowledgement of a second suspect from this initial review, it took an extended period for the institutions to acknowledge the allegation and remove this person from daily interactions with children. The second suspect was employed there for months after the incident,” the Kuykendall’s timeline assesses.

It would take until January of 2024 for two of the workers to be convicted of any crimes. The first, Analyn De Guzman, was convicted on one count of misdemeanor assault, with 30 days in jail, restitution to the Kuykendall family, anger management, a mental health review, and a prohibition on employment in a career field working with children. The second worker, Marilyn Kanekoa, was permitted deferred acceptance of a no-contest plea, meaning that the count of misdemeanor assault would be stricken from her record at the completion of eight days in jail. 

Present day 

So what went wrong? For one, getting even basic information from the military’s day care system about what happened to Bella was incredibly difficult. The Military.com report states, “If their kids had been at civilian day care centers, local law in most states would have required immediate notification and documentation of incidents so that parents could take action. Military day care facilities aren’t required to abide by those state laws and, in many cases, existing service policy would run afoul of those requirements.”

The investigation also revealed that “service branch rules generally prioritize protecting the institution, keep parents in the dark while officials formulate a public relations response, and have minimal safeguards to guarantee accountability. Base commanders and military police units often don’t know who is responsible for reporting and investigating allegations of abuse, allowing cases to slow to a crawl while offices shirk responsibility.” 

March of 2025 marked the first time that one of Bella’s doctors was able to review one day of the footage. “She told me that not only could they have caused serious harm to Bella, but they could also have killed her,” Kate said. “This assessment, compared to the other assessments from HPD and NCIS, made me feel less crazy, as other authorities downplayed the assaults so greatly.” 

Bella still has triggers and a fear of people who resemble her abusers. She shuts down and becomes timid at times, and at other times expresses uncontrollable aggression. Her doctor told Kate that this would be expected from a child who has suffered a head injury, as well as a delay in learning at school. 

Additionally, since creating the Operation Mei Mei Facebook page, the Kuykendalls shared that the family of another girl who was abused at the daycare reached out to them. “We were able to pull the video footage of her abuse – this was the first time they were able to see the footage, as it was denied to them back in 2022. They are currently seeking accountability and justice for their daughter, who had been at the CDC since she was five months old and was 22 months at the time of the abuse,” Kate shared. 

This is not the only family that has reached out to the Kuykendalls since starting the Facebook page. “We have heard from families across the country who are in similar positions to us and seeking help and guidance,” Kate explained. “Ultimately, I hope to create greater laws and policies to protect innocent children who cannot speak or defend themselves.” 

One of the major concerns that the Kuykendalls have is that the director who “failed to report the abuse as a mandatory report of not only our daughter but two other children by three of her employees” is still employed at the daycare center today. 

“We will never be able to trust the organization again, but we know they are a necessity,” Kate said. “Parents have the right to know what happens to their children behind closed doors and should be able to get them the medical attention they need if they are being mistreated. This right was taken away from us, and we don’t want other families to have to live through the nightmare we experienced.” 

To learn more about the Kuykendall’s fight for justice, visit the Operation Mei Mei Facebook page here.