Attorney General Russell Coleman announced Friday that the Kentucky Supreme Court has upheld the sentences of two Hopkinsville women convicted of abusing infants at the First United Methodist Church Daycare in 2018.
Allison Simpson was sentenced to 20 years in prison and Nina Morgan was sentenced to one year in the Christian County Jail in 2022.
The abuse was first reported in 2018 when workers at the daycare reported that Simpson would regularly throw children down onto a bed or the floor when she was upset with the child. They also recalled Simpson’s practice of patting the infants so excessively that it was like beating them. Concerned co-workers talked with parents who later notified Hopkinsville Police.
After reviewing more than 1,000 hours of footage from the daycare, Hopkinsville police arrested Simpson and Morgan, who is Simpson’s great aunt, who worked alongside her niece in the nursery.
Beyond the video evidence, testimony about the abuse came primarily from the parents of the children. The women appealed their sentences and the admissibility of the parents’ testimony along with several other alleged errors from the trial court. The Kentucky Supreme Court agreed with the Commonwealth and upheld the women’s sentences.
In March 2023, former First United Methodist Church pastor Paige Williams was found guilty on eight counts of third-degree criminal abuse, but last August, Kentucky’s Court of Appeals reversed the decision — clearing Williams of the crime.
In its nine-page ruling, the KCA cited 1998’s Davis v. Commonwealth and 2014’s Staples v. Commonwealth as key chapters defining “actual custody” of children — which has no major description in state statute or common law.
Former daycare director Abby Leach was also convicted in this case and received a one-year jail sentence.
