It can be difficult for working parents to leave their children at a daycare facility, especially after hearing countless tragic stories in the news about children being abused or neglected by the people tasked with keeping them safe.
Yet Montana daycare owner Martha McClure proved that not all those in childcare take their responsibilities so lightly. “My job is not to warehouse children. My job is to take care of them,” said McClure. “Their mothers hand them off to me in the morning, expecting me to meet all of their needs just like they would if they were home with them. My job is to defend, protect, and guard their children with my own life — that’s how I feel about it.”
So when a non-custodial parent showed up at her in-home daycare and tried to take the three children, who she’s been caring for since the oldest was an infant and are in the foster system, she knew she couldn’t let him take them. McClure managed to lure the aggressive man outside and locked the door behind her. Once outside, the man and his girlfriend began beating her and hit her repeatedly in the face with a shovel.
The couple has since been arrested and charged, and McClure was left with broken bones in her face, pain, vision problems, and required surgery, but wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. “I’m grateful that it wasn’t worse,” she said. “It’s my job, what I did, and I will honestly say that the scars physically are going to heal. Had I given them to him — the emotional scars — I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. Everybody that mattered in that moment was safe.”
“To me, it wasn’t heroic. To me, it’s what I’m supposed to do,” McClure said. “The children in my care — I am their person. I am their momma bear when their mother isn’t there. Did I know he was going to hurt me? Yes. Did I hope he wouldn’t? Sure. Would I do it over again? Definitely.”
McClure is also thankful that the kids at her home at the time of the attack luckily didn’t see anything.“They don’t know what all happened. We did the best we could to keep them safe and keep them innocent,” said McClure. “I don’t want (my home) to be a scary place where something scary happened. For most of these kids, my house is their second home.”
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[Featured Image: Martha McClure/GoFundMe]
Daycare Worker Sacrificed Herself To Protect Kids From Father is an article from: LifeDaily