{"id":453065,"date":"2026-05-30T19:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T19:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/453065\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T19:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T19:03:08","slug":"mum-says-she-learned-of-tauranga-kaleidoscope-childcare-centre-abuse-from-a-news-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/453065\/","title":{"rendered":"Mum says she learned of Tauranga Kaleidoscope Childcare Centre abuse from a news report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quinn then had his teaching registration cancelled for two years<\/a> and was censured for serious misconduct by the tribunal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just breaks my heart \u2026 [more than] four years later and you just feel like a bit of a failure as a parent that you weren\u2019t able to do something sooner. You feel like you\u2019ve just absolutely let your child down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaleidoscope is owned by Tauranga<\/a> couple Matt Wooten and Marama Vryer. <\/p>\n

Wooten told the Herald: \u201cWe are not going to comment on this as we have communicated with all involved\u201d.<\/p>\n

The mother contacted Wooten and Vryer after reading the tribunal\u2019s decision, and was told her child was among Quinn\u2019s victims and \u201cthey wanted to tell me, but they were advised not to\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"KaleidoscopeKaleidoscope Childcare Centre in Tauranga. Photo \/ Google Streetview<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t say by who, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just absolutely appalled. The daycare owners were like second family to us, I had so much trust in them \u2026 you have to sign a form for when they bump their head or stub their toe, so why are we not being informed about abuse?\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019d since formally complained to police and the NZ Teaching Council.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel profoundly let down that parents were not informed at the time, nor advised that an investigation was taking place \u2026 [and] cancelling his teaching registration for only two years does not reflect the seriousness of the harm caused to these children and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NZNZ Teaching Council interim chief executive Tom Gott confirmed they’d been contacted by a parent of a child in relation to former Kaleidoscope Childcare Centre teacher Sean Charles Quinn. Photo \/ NZ Teaching Council<\/p>\n

Teaching Council<\/a> interim chief executive Tom Gott said they were contacted on Tuesday by the parent of a child connected to the Quinn case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognise this is a deeply concerning situation for those affected, and that the council\u2019s role in safeguarding learners, supporting quality teaching, and maintaining public trust and confidence in the teaching profession is critically important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gott said they were in contact with the parent and unable to comment further until they\u2019d been able to \u201cfully respond to their concerns\u201d.<\/p>\n

Police declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The woman said her child, now 7, struggles with teachers, shuts down emotionally and sometimes has difficulty engaging. <\/p>\n

A psychiatrist had told her the child needed \u201ca lot of praise and positive affirmation\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

She couldn\u2019t \u201csay with certainty that this is connected\u201d, but it was \u201cincredibly painful\u201d to now question whether some of her child\u2019s challenges could be related to Quinn\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

A psychiatrist first became involved in 2023, after the couple noticed concerning behaviours.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Kaleidoscope] actually asked me if I wanted to get a psychiatrist involved \u2026 so we went with a psychiatrist and even then they didn\u2019t mention anything [about Quinn] \u2026 they didn\u2019t even advise the psychiatrist who actually sat in at the daycare and saw [our child\u2019s] behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like [my child\u2019s] been robbed of getting that help [they\u2019ve] needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019d booked a new appointment with a psychiatrist after learning her child was among Quinn\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer Kaleidoscope teacher Sean Charles Quinn was found to have treated children harshly at the Tauranga childcare centre, including grabbing them forcefully and yelling in their faces. <\/p>\n

She and her husband \u2013 who has cried looking at photos from the time of the Kaleidoscope incidents because he \u201cfeels like he\u2019s failed\u201d as a protector \u2013 had pulled out old daycare pictures and asked their child if they remembered Quinn, but were told no.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t go into too much detail because we didn\u2019t want [our child] reliving it all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the tribunal\u2019s report, Quinn<\/a> was described as grabbing their child by their arms to stand them up before yelling in their face after the child wouldn\u2019t settle in the sleep room.<\/p>\n

The child then cried themselves to sleep.<\/p>\n

On another occasion, the child was \u201cforcefully\u201d put on the floor by Quinn after throwing food on the floor, the report said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis caused [the child] to cry. Mr Quinn picked [the child] up and said words to the effect of, \u2018Give me a cuddle, do you want another chance?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SeanSean Charles Quinn initially denied wrongdoing to the NZ Teachers’ Disciplinary Tribunal, but later admitted to his actions. <\/p>\n

In other incidents, a 4-year-old was chased into a bathroom and held down on a toilet seat, a 23-month-old pulled by the arm on to a mat and a 3-year-old struggling to put his pants on was forced by Quinn to stay in one spot and do it by himself.<\/p>\n

Quinn told the \u201cvisibly upset\u201d child not to ask another teacher for help, with the same child pulled by his shirt, made to sit in one spot and told \u201cyou are not welcome outside\u201d in another incident.<\/p>\n

He was \u201cfirm but fair\u201d, had never been violent or abusive during his 20-year career, and other teachers were colluding against him, Quinn told a Teaching Council triage committee in November 2023.<\/p>\n

But he later admitted to the behaviour, accepting he was responsible for serious misconduct.<\/p>\n

Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quinn then had his teaching registration cancelled for two years and was censured for serious misconduct by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1903,42772,3471,26977,1550,2511,109058,6184,2245,71,80611,97687,37413,40484,2721,13631,111,43,139,69,1118,218015,1560,312,20863,106382,1227,7574,7563,13835,6859,17454],"class_list":["post-453065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-abuse","tag-aggressive","tag-among","tag-banned","tag-centre","tag-child","tag-childcare","tag-childhood","tag-early","tag-from","tag-harmed","tag-heartbroken","tag-kaleidoscope","tag-learned","tag-mum","tag-never","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-outbursts","tag-report","tag-says","tag-she","tag-subject","tag-tauranga","tag-teacher","tag-those","tag-toddler","tag-told","tag-whose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}