UNITED STATES
Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting
By Amy Julia Harris / April 14, 2016
She’s been called a crook. A con artist. A snake in the grass. But in Alabama, the only thing that really matters to state regulators is that she calls herself a Christian.
She ran a church day care from a decrepit warehouse that one worker called a “house out of a horror movie.” She opened another child care center next to a porn store.
Each of her day cares has been dogged by complaints of abuse and neglect. Workers said she hit children with flyswatters, locked them in closets or rapped them with rulers. She’s failed to pay so many employees that one reportedly slapped her in the face and another threatened to hurl a pickle jar at her, according to police reports.
She has been arrested multiple times, for crimes ranging from theft to child endangerment.
In total, Deborah Stokes has operated at least a dozen Christian day cares across southern Alabama. Every time she is chased out of town by furious parents, workers or landlords, she reopens in the next town over. In the process, she has collected at least $86,000 in taxpayer funding to run her day cares with almost no oversight.
She doesn’t need a license. She doesn’t need a curriculum or qualified workers. All she needs is a building with a roof, desperate parents and a piece of paper saying she runs a church.
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