UPDATE--Criminal Nannies: 4 Stories You Should Know
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After releasing this original blog several weeks ago, a good friend and former colleague reached out to Stealth Advise and told us we should have included ONE MORE criminal nanny in our blog.
Thanks for your recommendation, Johnny Utah. Here it is.
Aubrey Alta Anderson's Booking Photo
Courtesy: Associated Press
In a previously written article, Criminal Nannies: 4 Stories You Should Know, I shared with you several nanny cases that shocked communities across the nation. Although these nannies broke the trust of the families they worked for, they ultimately received the justice they deserved. In this article, I’ll tell you a story about another dangerous nanny who deeply impacted families on two different continents. After you have finished reading, feel free to chime in on whether or not you think the affected families received their share of justice.
It was the start of a new year in Park City, Utah, in January 2012. Busy with a set of one-month-old twins, Sarah Tuefing and her husband Dan Lemaitre chose to hire a nighttime nanny in addition to the nanny who watched their infants during the day. They soon found Aubrey Alta Anderson, a 32-year-old woman from Salt Lake City, to care for their daughter Grace and son Kalvin. Everything seemed to be going great with Anderson for the first month, but that all changed the following month.
In February 2012, the daytime nanny noticed severe swelling in Kalvin's legs, along with bruises on his forearm. Kalvin and Grace were immediately rushed to the hospital, and doctors noticed that both children showed signs of child abuse. Further tests revealed that one child had two broken ankles and rib fractures, and the other had significant bruising. The hospital notified the authorities, and the husband and wife were immediately suspected of abusing the children. Further investigation eliminated both the parents and the daytime nanny as suspects, and the police narrowed in on Anderson due to an incident far away in Belgium.
Meanwhile in Bruges, Belgium, Anderson was already suspected in a similar child abuse case (unbeknownst to U.S. authorities). The abuse in Belgium was reported to the authorities the previous year, in June 2011. Employed as a nanny for newborn twins there, Anderson cared for the children until one day the parents noticed that they had multiple arm and leg fractures. The infants were taken immediately to the hospital; Anderson took her belongings, went to the airport, and fled to the United States. She later found work in Utah, caring for the Tuefing/Lemaitre twins, until she was suspected of abusing them.
In June 2012, after a five-month-long investigation in Utah, Anderson was arrested by the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. She was charged with two counts of felony child abuse and two counts of misdemeanor child abuse. When Belgian authorities found out Anderson was arrested and in custody at the Summit County Jail in the U.S., they charged and convicted her with two counts of assault and battery.
The charge and conviction in Belgium heavily influenced Anderson’s conviction in the U.S. On April 15, 2013, Anderson pleaded guilty to two counts of child abuse in the third degree, in exchange for the other two charges being dropped. Despite pleading guilty, she professed her innocence and denied taking responsibility for harming the children. She was sentenced to only five years of probation with an ankle monitor, and was barred from having contact with children younger than 14 during those five years. After five years, she would be free to have contact with minors again. She was also ordered to pay $5,182 in restitution to the family.
Anderson’s punishment, however, was far from over. Two years later, on July 8, 2015, Anderson was extradited to Belgium, to stand trial in Bruges for the crime she committed in 2011. The first day of the trial was October 27, 2015, and lasted until January 2016. Because the Bruges criminal court had sentenced her by default to four years in prison in 2013, it was determined that she would serve one year in prison, effective immediately. It is expected that Alderson will be released from prison in January 2017, and will most likely return to the U.S. to serve the remaining year of probation.