On late Wednesday evening, the Commonwealth finally rested in its case against First United Methodist Church’s former pastor Paige Williams and day care director Abby Leach — allowing for defense to call its first witnesses to the stand Thursday morning, regarding the potential “breaching” of duties revolving around eight children within the nursery.
Among them was Leach herself, who spent more than two hours in examination and cross detailing her day-to-day efforts within the daycare, her rise in employment from teacher to interim director to the main position, and the problems that eventually arrived within the premises.
Special Prosecutor Blake Chambers closed tightly, noting that Leach had hired Courtney McCombs in October of 2018 — having had her sign the mandatory child abuse reporting affidavit upon her employment.
It’s a document, Chambers noted, that Leach had to sign when she was first hired in 2011, and that over time through winter 2018 and spring 2019, there was ample time to notify parents, church leaders, or anyone, about Simpson’s repeated behaviors.
Furthermore, Chambers was able to draw out the fact that Leach never truly approached Simpson about her reported behaviors.
Leach resigned in early 2019, telling her defense attorney David Bundrick that she “didn’t feel like things” were being told to her, and that there were “secrets” being withheld. She also said she didn’t “want to be there anymore.”
Also in testimony with Bundrick, Leach noted plenty about her time with the day care, which spanned nearly a decade:
— Having been trained under former director Elaine Blake, she learned how to work through a long waiting list, the state portal and child care assistance, as well as employee hiring, background checks, fingerprinting and general clerical needs. She said she was “briefly” trained on a camera system, one that was much more updated later in her tenure.
— She said there were “complaints everyday about someone or something,” that the day care was often “gossipy,” and that many days, it was just “women being women.” She said she could have spent entire days working through these types of issues.
— She said she often made grocery and Sam’s Club runs, and that per regulations and “Safe Sanctuary” guidelines, they tried to have as much coverage as possible in the rooms, only to sometimes have multiple call-ins and absences in the workforce.
— At one point, while interim, Leach said a worker had missed 31 days in a single year, and she wanted to address that concern. That person, Leach said, was still employed in the day care when she resigned in spring 2019, and that she’d been “shot down” by this day care committee to remove them from employment.
— A series of August, September and October 2018 meetings eventually led to repeated “slight” concerns from co-workers to both Leach and Williams, which culminated into Christmas 2018. In a July 2018 meeting between Leach and Williams, Leach said discussions took place surrounding concerns of Simpson’s behaviors, which were becoming more reported. Leach testified that Simpson wasn’t “very well liked,” and that anyone working alongside her observed “her way, or the highway” behavior.
— Leach also said staffing the day care “wasn’t easy,” because it was a part-time, low-paying job, and that she usually only needed part-time support to keep the daycare effective.
— In that September 2018 meeting between Leach, Williams, Will Campbell and Johnnie Shaver, the one that eventually brought in Audra Humphries White and others for concerns, Leach said she thought she was “about to get fired.”
— In Christmas 2018, Leach said she missed a considerable amount of time because of her husband, Blake, who had an unfortunate and grievous health matter going into Christmas Day. It required hospitalization due to seizure concerns, and in the next few weeks, she maintained a number of duties with her husband and child. Before Leach took the stand, her husband testified to his health. Also during this time, she was assisting an unnamed employee escape eviction.
McCombs testified Wednesday, “What was I supposed to do, beat up Allison?” Bundrick asked Leach what she thought of that. Leach responded: “I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.”
Leach also told Bundrick “she didn’t know why” she didn’t report to proper authorities as time wore on, but she “would’ve done everything differently” in retrospect.
Going into the lunch hour, Deatherage had former FUMC’s Jeff Calhoun on the stand — essentially breaking down, in extreme detail, the ordnance of Kentucky’s Methodist Church, and how pastoral roles are mostly spent in church-like efforts.
The trial will continue well into Thursday, with Friday primed to be the longest day of the week.
