Army Daycares Are Abusing Kids and Shredding the Evidence

What Was on the Video

The Intercept reviewed records and conducted extensive interviews with the Feindt family, and the picture they put together is ugly. According to a memorandum the family submitted to Defense Department officials, surveillance footage from the North Post Child Development Center at Fort Belvoir showed a teacher pinning the boy's legs under a table while three other staff members stood and watched. The footage then shows the teacher yanking the child up by his clothing, grabbing him by the wrists, and shoving him out of the camera's view. In audio the family recorded while reviewing the footage, a child they identified as their son can be heard screaming at the teacher to stop.

On a separate occasion the same month, January 2025, staff at the same facility mocked and harassed the boy, according to the family's records. That was the day of Hegseth's confirmation hearing. The family was not watching the news. They were trying to figure out why their son was suddenly different.

A Year of Stonewalling, Then a Convenient Hard Drive Wipe

The Feindt family did not piece this together overnight. According to The Intercept, it took over a year of persistent requests before they had enough to understand what had happened to their child. Military officials refused to answer basic questions, directed the family to file Freedom of Information Act requests, and claimed they did not have the relevant records. Then, months later, some of those records materialized. Classic.

When the family sought additional surveillance footage beyond the limited clips they were allowed to review, Fort Belvoir officials told them the remaining video had been deleted after the case was reviewed. They were told the case was closed. They were told to file a FOIA request if they wanted more. Amanda Feindt and her husband were not allowed to have copies of the footage they did see. While they watched it, they recorded audio on their phones. That recording is now part of the evidentiary record they took to federal officials themselves, because the institution charged with protecting their son had no interest in preserving it.

"My son barely has the words to describe what happened to him," Feindt told The Intercept. "You can see it in the video. They're screaming while the abuse is taking place."

The Kangaroo Court Nobody Told You About

Here is how the Army handles child abuse allegations at its facilities. Not through civilian courts. Not through an independent investigation. Through something called an Incident Determination Committee, a quasi-judicial body that The Intercept describes as operating without most of the safeguards found in civilian legal proceedings. These panels can include social workers who were already involved in the underlying case. They can include members of the same chain of command being scrutinized. There is no transcript. No evidentiary record available to families. No opportunity for cross-examination. Parents cannot attend. The Feindt family asked to be at the hearing. They were denied.

Ryan Sweazey, a retired Air Force officer and former inspector general, told The Intercept exactly what this system is: "It's one entity acting as judge, jury and executioner. There is no real due process, and there are almost no checks and balances." The committee applies a "preponderance of information" standard that legal experts say can and does produce conclusions that contradict what civilian investigators find when they look at the same evidence. In the Feindt case, the IDC did not substantiate the abuse claims, despite medical concerns and the very video footage its investigators had reviewed. Local authorities, using the civilian legal standard most of us grew up assuming applied to everything, classified it as child abuse.

This Is Not One Family's Bad Luck

The Intercept spoke with three other military families who reported child maltreatment at Army facilities and ran into the same wall. Heavily redacted surveillance footage. Incomplete clips. Audio stripped from videos. Investigation reports that arrived months or years later, scrubbed of anything useful. Sweazey told The Intercept this is a deliberate institutional tactic: "They tell you the investigation is done, and if you want to challenge it, you have to file a FOIA request. The report then comes back heavily redacted months or years later."

Then there is Jason Degenhard, a retired Army special operations master sergeant whose 4-month-old son Sonny died in 2012 after a caregiver at the child development center on Pope Air Force Base left him propped on his stomach against a rolled blanket and walked out of the room, as WRAL News in Raleigh reported. The infant's muscles were not strong enough to support his weight. He suffocated and suffered catastrophic brain damage. He was taken off life support days later. Degenhard told The Intercept that the system is so fragmented that even parents trying to figure out basic safety records for these centers have almost nothing to go on. His son's facility was on an Air Force base but operated under Army garrison authority. Nobody seemed to own the accountability.

Where Is Pete Hegseth in All of This

Pete Hegseth spent his confirmation hearing talking about military lethality and protecting military families. Amanda Feindt was in the fourth row. She had submitted a letter supporting his nomination. She was, at that moment, a believer.

The Intercept's reporting does not indicate that Hegseth or his Pentagon have taken any action on Army child care accountability since he took over the Defense Department. What his Pentagon has been busy with, publicly, is purging diversity programs, firing generals, and publicly feuding with the media. The infrastructure that allowed staff to abuse a 4-year-old, destroy the evidence, and close the case without consequence is still there. The families asking questions are still getting FOIA request forms in response.