Lucretia Johnson, a Black grandmother in Dothan, Alabama, said a white speech therapist, Haley Booker Shay, slapped her three-year-old granddaughter during a session earlier this year at a local clinic located in Doctor’s Center on West Main Street.
Johnson has full custody of her granddaughter, whom she initially took to the facility for her speech impediment. She told BLACK ENTERPRISE that she usually stays with her granddaughter for the duration of her sessions. However, on January 25, she stepped out for a moment and, within ten minutes, heard screams from her granddaughter as she was allegedly being gripped by the arm and dragged to the front by Shay, who she said had slapped her.
The grandmother reported the incident to local lieutenants, captains, magistrates, other government officials, DHR offices, and clinic staff but said no real disciplinary action has been taken.
“How is it that a grown woman can slap a little baby and not be charged with abuse?” Johnson wrote via email. “Is it because she is a white woman, and our black babies’ lives do not matter?”
She told BE that she does not understand what led Shay to allegedly put her hands on her granddaughter.
Civil rights activist Essie Berry called for a federal investigation into the alleged incident that has brought about harassment towards the grandmother, who says she has already endured the invasion of privacy, bright lights being shined into her bedroom and bathroom windows, cameras being turned to face her back yard, vehicles being egged and broken in to, knocking on her privacy fence, racial name calling, and other uncivilized acts of prejudice.
