LUBBOCK, Texas — A Lubbock mom said she is frustrated after she received a video of her daughter slap boxing with another member at the Boys & Girls Club.
Shelly Voss had her daughter at the Boys & Girls Club over the summer, hoping it would give her structure and guidance.
“I send her to the Boys & Girls Club to get some activities and you know, socialize because I want her to have friends and I’m very disappointed that they would allow something like this to happen,” said Voss.
Voss said instead of structure, she noticed behavioral issues in her daughter since she’s joined the club.
“Pretty much since that time we’ve had some difficulties with her. She’s got a history of trauma and I feel like that this, you know, fight club or whatever it is that’s going on, maybe triggered some of those traumatic experiences,” said Voss.
The video also shows an employee encouraging the behavior.
“It was like the last day, and they were like, ‘so what do we want to do?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ They were like, ‘we should slap blocks, or we should box.’ I went in with one of my friends, me and her battled and then the person in the video and one of my other friends battled, which was the adult that was letting us do it and he got knocked out,” said Voss’s daughter who can be seen in the video.
Voss hopes more action can be taken to prevent this from happening again.
“He shouldn’t be allowed to work with kids or the vulnerable population because that’s wrong, and if he’s allowed to work with other kids and spread that violence onto them too, I mean, we have enough violence in this world,” said Voss.
Tom Vermillion, Executive Director of the Lubbock Boys & Girls Club released a statement in reference to the incident.
The Boys & Girls Club just learned about this incident that happened this past summer last week with a call from a parent who sent us this video. We have been reviewing this incident to see what the circumstances were and who was actually involved. All of the parties involved were only here for the summer and no longer attend the Club.
The Lubbock Boys & Girls Club does not and will never tolerate any type of violence among our members or staff. We are appalled at this video and had we known about this during the summer we would have terminated this employee immediately. All children that were involved would have been suspended from the Club as well as Jr. Staff. This behavior will not be tolerated!
This past summer all staff were trained a week before summer programming began. There were 14 sessions that staff attended ranging from Child Safety, Active Shooter Training, Educational Activities, Bullying & Suicide Prevention, Conflict Resolution, CPR/First Aid and several other program topics.
All staff must go through a Criminal Background Check as well as being Drug Tested before they can ever work with our members. References are always checked, and some staff are required to go through fingerprinting in order to work at a particular Club.
We are not a licensed Day Care, but our staffing ratios are 1 to 20 in a general setting and usually 1 to 10 on field trips. We also use Jr. Staff alongside with our regular staff. Jr. Staff are never to be left alone with a group of children.
We are saddened that this happened at one of our Clubs and will not tolerate this behavior from any staff or volunteer. It is a shame that all of our other hard-working staff at our Clubs will be judged on this one incident and not on the many wonderful things that they do each and every day.”
Tom Vermillion, Executive Director of the Lubbock Boys & Girls Club
