Teresa Biswanath (Washington County District Attorney’s Office).
An unlicensed daycare provider in Oregon is facing prison time for the death of an 11-month-old boy she was meant to care for. Prosecutors revealed that she “forced the infant into a swaddle far too small for his size” and then positioned him on his stomach on a bed with a pacifier in his mouth, which resulted in his death.
In Washington County, Teresa Biswanath was given a two-year prison sentence accompanied by three years of supervised release following her conviction for criminally negligent homicide, as announced by the Washington County District Attorney’s Office in a press release. She is permanently banned from operating a licensed childcare facility and has been instructed to avoid any contact with the victim’s family, the announcement states.
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On April 30, Biswanath was found guilty by a jury for the child’s 2022 death. Operating an “unlicensed in-home daycare” at that time, she informed the authorities that she applied procedures akin to those at her previous job, a “well-known childcare center” in the area that explicitly forbade the use of infant swaddling, according to the DA’s office.
“On the day of the child’s death, the defendant was caring for five children, including the victim,” the office says in its release. “During nap time, the defendant squeezed the victim into a swaddle much too small for his size, one designed for newborns less than three months old who could not roll over or crawl as he could. She used straps to bind the child’s arms and put a pacifier with a 6-inch stuffed animal attached into his mouth.”
Prosecutors say Biswanath initially tried to get the child to fall asleep in the room where the other children were. She then took him to a bedroom on the second floor of the home and placed him “facedown on the bed with his arms constrained by the swaddle,” according to the DA’s office.
“The victim was upstairs for at least one hour as the defendant was in and out of the bedroom,” the office says. “The defendant left to check on the other children and when she returned to the upstairs room, she found the victim blue and unresponsive. She attempted to perform CPR while her husband called an ambulance. First responders were unable to revive the child.”
