When Her Baby Started Acting Strange, This Mom Set Up a Hidden Camera to Find Out Why

Leaving a child in the hands of a perfect stranger is one of the most difficult things a parent must do. Just ask Whitney Matney and her husband Chris from Springdale, Arkansas. They had no choice but to leave their 11-month-old baby, Raley, in the hands of a nanny. But when the baby’s behavior changed, the couple set up a nanny cam to further investigate, and what they discovered left them completely horrified.

Everyone knows that children act up, especially when they’re young, but Whitney and Chris Matney started noticing that their 11-month-old daughter, Raley, was acting really strange. Matney couldn’t help but imagine every possible scenario that would explain why her baby was so distraught.

“I’m just being a crazy first-time mom,” she reassured herself.

But sadly, she was much mistaken.

The Matneys jumped for joy when they first brought their daughter home from the hospital. She was healthy, lively, and, most importantly, happy. However, like most children, she took up a lot of her parents’ time, and this was an issue that would set their daughter on a course toward serious trouble. At first, the couple didn’t mind waking up at odd hours of the night to feed her, burp her, and change her, but the Matneys had other responsibilities that made watching over Raley a real challenge, especially for the little girl’s mother, who was in law school. Matney was in law school, which meant she had to sift through endless books, documents, and cases. She had to focus solely on her studies in order to pass the bar exam, but she had a child now, and her husband could only do so much to help her.

What was she going to do?

Raley was only a month away from her first birthday and she was a handful, but Matney had a lot on her plate and her husband was a pretty busy guy too. So the two of them made a decision that would have horrible repercussions for their family. In fact, Matney later told ABC News 20/20, “You see these horror stories on TV and it’s like a surreal feeling when it happens to you.”

In October 2020, the couple decided that they needed a nanny. Matney posted her request on Facebook, and someone answered her call right away. It wasn’t a stranger either, which seemed like a blessing at the time, but Matney eventually realized she couldn’t have been more wrong. The woman who responded was Melissa Medina. She was one of Matney’s old high school classmates.

She responded, “I’m very interested. Do you mind if I meet with you?”

A distraught Matney told ABC News she was excited, but a part of her was suspicious, so she did what any good mother would do. Matney found some comfort in the fact that Medina was an old acquaintance of hers, but she wanted to make sure that she didn’t have a criminal record, so she ran a background check and had a chat with one of her references. Everything checked out, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any issues. Matney had no reason to doubt Medina’s intentions, so she set up a meeting with Raley, and the two of them hit it off right away. Medina talked to the baby and played with her, so Matney decided to hire a friend.

But it wasn’t long before strange things started to happen. Raley’s behavior changed from the first day that Medina started working as the family’s nanny.

“The day Melissa started working there, when I crossed the threshold into her bedroom, she just started screaming and I just thought, you know, she’s tired, she’s getting sick,” Matney told ABC News.

Something more sinister was happening that Matney was completely unaware of. There were other warning signs that made Matney very suspicious. Medina claimed that Raley napped for four hours straight when she was caring for her, but Matney knew that was virtually impossible.

“She’d sleep an hour, an hour and a half, never four hours,” she told ABC News.

Then a frightening thought popped into her head: What if her nanny was giving their baby medicine to make her sleep?

Matney feared that Medina was giving Raley Benadryl to knock her out, but then she thought she was just being a paranoid first-time mom, so she pushed that feeling away. But she couldn’t help but notice that her baby would run and grab on to her or her father whenever Medina arrived. So in a panic, Matney turned to a higher power for guidance. A doctor told Matney that Raley’s behavior was the result of separation anxiety, but that wasn’t the only thing that was raising red flags. Whenever Medina would babysit, she would leave the house spotless, which Matney knew from experience was really difficult to do while taking care of Raley.

So about six weeks later, she decided to take more aggressive actions. This time, she’d do anything in her power to find out what was going on. Matney bought a clock radio nanny cam and placed it in the living room.

“I put up this camera thinking maybe she’s leaving her in her bouncer a little too long,” she told ABC News.

When she got home, she saw that the camera was facing the wall. Luckily for this mom, there was still some footage that had been captured, but after Matney started reviewing the tape, she was left horrified. As Matney started watching the footage, she realized that her nanny had left Raley in her bouncer for two hours, but her heart sank when she saw Medina spanking her baby and shaking her violently. Her maternal instincts immediately kicked in. Pretty soon, the nanny would be the one crying and screaming.

“There’s a level of crazy that exists in a mother that you don’t know is there,” Matney told ABC News.

She called the police immediately after watching the footage, then she took Raley to the emergency room. Fortunately, she was okay. Now it was time for Medina to pay for what she’d done. Two days later, Medina arrived at their house and was ready for work, and the police were there to apprehend her right away. But Matney was still overwhelmed with feelings of guilt for introducing her daughter to such a terrible threat.

“It’s like a surreal feeling when it happens to you,” Matney told ABC News 20/20.

Deep down inside, she knew it was always a possibility, but she never imagined that something so horrible could happen to her family until she saw the footage. But wouldn’t Medina get punished by a court of law, or would she be able to get away with her actions? Raley didn’t sustain any physical injuries, so Medina pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child. It was a class D felony, which meant that the nanny got only 90 days in jail and three years of probation. But she refused to tell her side of the story when ABC News tracked Medina down outside her apartment complex in Springdale, Arkansas, and gave her the opportunity to explain her actions. Unfortunately, she refused to make any comments.

Did the justice system go too easy on her?

Many believe that Medina didn’t get what she deserved. To make things worse, the nanny had Arkansas Act 346 at her disposal. It’s also known as the First Offender Act, which allows a first-time offender who pleaded guilty to get their record expunged once they complete their probation. Matney realized that this put other families in danger. Matney did some research and learned that since Medina had her criminal record expunged, she could pretty much become a nanny again, and the next family who hires her would have no idea that she was ever convicted for what she did to Raley. But there’s no way she was about to let that happen.

“I’m trying to keep other people from being subjected to, well, Melissa and other people who have done this type of thing and had their records expunged. I think that their faces need to be out there, at least for parents,” Matney told ABC News.

So that’s exactly what she did. In 2015, she worked with Arkansas lawmakers Senator John Woods and Representative Greg Leding to create a child abuse registry. The child maltreatment registry went into effect to ensure that offenders don’t land a job working with kids, and Matney is hoping that all the states across the nation will adopt a similar philosophy to keep everyone’s children safe.

While some children experience side effects as a result of abuse, Raley has grown into an amazing little lady, only she’s not so little anymore. In fact, she’s doing great and she’s all smiles because she has a happy home, lots of love, and will never have to be near Medina again.