BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – A former DCF employee in Brevard County who was one of four people at a daycare charged with failing to report the abuse of a 3-year-old who was beaten to death days later will be on probation for the next year.
Dallas Jasper accepted a plea bargain from prosecutors Monday that allowed the 28-year-old to plead no contest to a lesser offense of culpable negligence.
Jasper previously faced up to five years in prison.
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“Are you pleading no contest because you believe it’s in your best interest to resolve your case today,” Judge Aaron Peacock asked her.
“Yes,” Jasper replied.
The plea bargain is nearly three years after police said Jasper looked at pictures of bruises and scratches on Jameson Nance, but didn’t report that abuse.
Jameson was only 3-years-old, and just nine days later, police said his mother’s boyfriend, Josh Manns, beat Jameson to death.
All that time Jameson was being abused, police said Erica Dotson knew what her boyfriend was doing to her son, but did nothing to protect him.
Dotson was a nursing assistant who took Jameson to daycare at Health First and told workers that a duck gave her son the bruises.
Assistant state attorney Julia Lynch told that part of the story to the court.
“There was something about the mother making an allegation the child had been bit by a duck which made no sense, whatsoever, because the picture was not consistent with a duck doing anything to this child,” Lynch said. “The child ended up being brutally murdered.”
Lynch told Judge Peacock part of Jasper’s plea deal is that she’ll testify at trial against the daycare’s director.
Jaymie Gaucher is facing the same five years in prison that Jasper was before Monday’s deal.
The other two daycare workers, Elizabeth Fowler and Kristal Samuel, also took pleas and like Jasper, each got a year of probation.
“The child was taken to a daycare and had this been reported, I think it’s very, very likely this child would be alive today,” Lynch said.
Under another condition of the plea, Jasper isn’t allowed to work with children again.
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