Hudson day care worker charged with molesting child during naptime

HUDSON -- A 29-year-old day care worker was arrested Thursday night after sheriff's deputies said he admitted to molesting a 4-year-old boy during naptime.

Brian Michael Lane, a six-year veteran of Sugar Plum First Class Preschool, was charged with lewd and lascivious molestation, according to a sheriff's report. Deputies said the boy, whose name was not released, attended the preschool at 7800 New York Avenue from August to January. He told deputies he was a student in Lane's classroom and that Lane had touched him improperly under his clothes numerous times while the boy and his classmates were napping.

The abuse came to light when Sugar Plum staff caught the boy acting in a sexually inappropriate way with another child, sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin said. The boy was with another child inside a kind of makeshift tent with no clothes on.

"An indication of child abuse can be this type of behavior," Tobin said.

The school notified the boy's parents, who took him to a counselor. The boy told the counselor about the abuse by Lane, Tobin said. The boy also told a sheriff's detective that no other kids at the daycare were abused.

"Obviously it's a possibility," Tobin said.

Lane, of 7751 Deerfoot Drive in New Port Richey, told deputies that he touched the boy once as the child described it "for less than a minute" and that he "did not know why he did this," the report said.

Sugar Plum First Class is a day care that offers subsidized care to the working poor and to children in protective custody. James Farrelly, executive director of the Early Learning Coalition of Pasco and Hernando Counties, said Lane had been at the center six years but did not comment further until he gets more information.

The daycare's director told investigators she has security cameras that feed live into her office but do not record images. She monitors them regularly and never saw anything unusual, Tobin said.

-- Lisa Buie and Molly Moorhead, Times staff