I am so sorry and so shocked that Martha Lynne Mayo is gone. I don’t know where to begin. I must try. The letter you sent does not mention her earlier history as a Family Child Care Provider. I am unsurprised to read that she was active in the fight against torture. Martha Lynne Mayo was a fighter for truth and justice long before she joined T3 (Tackling Torture at the Top).

Martha Lynne Mayo’s story as a Family Day Care Provider is incredibly improbable, fascinating, astonishing, and terrifying. And still profoundly relevant. MLM was a courageous (and sometimes reckless) pioneer for children and women.

Martha Lynne Mayo was one of my mentors and role models. She had a huge impact on my and Marian’s lives. I have such a strange and timely story to tell. Martha’s Family Day Care Home was located in the Powderhorn neighborhood near the Native American Center. She held a C-3 Family Day Care license, the same as Marian Turner, the most children allowed, requiring two (or more) adult caregivers. MLM had employees in her day care home; Marian Turner had a full-time partner (me).

Martha’s day care home was easily the most diverse and the most actively progressive I have ever seen or heard of. That was her wonder and her downfall. To me the woman was almost a saint. Doomed by her beautiful nature in an ugly, jealous world. Too much? Read on and decide for yourself.

Martha served equal numbers of disadvantaged and privileged families. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, business people; along with Native families, immigrant families, African American families. I was wonder struck and only understood half of what she did striving to make the childcare world better. She had a genius for bringing disparate families together with mutual respect. (She was also an accomplished ballroom dance partner.)

Martha became the victim, the central figure, in the biggest day care horror story I have ever known. Hers was perhaps the most absurd and notorious day care persecution in Minnesota history. Martha was inadvertently and indirectly responsible for the largest study of children’s sexuality ever conducted in the United States. She was a guest several times on the Family Day Care Radio Show. I have so many ways to tell her story. I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps the beginning as it came to me.

I met Martha in an advanced child development class she and I were auditing for training credit at (as I recall) Gustavus Adolphus University. At that time the Hennepin County Family Day Care Licensing Department allowed childcare providers to take up to half of their required annual training credits thru college level classes. Later the County quit allowing this. I was told by a day care licensing worker the colleges and the U of M were teaching too many ideas and practices which were not compatible with the philosophy of the Hennepin County Licensing Department. (No surprise there.)

Lynne, Marian, and myself were among the few child care providers who took advantage of this opportunity to audit University level child care classes. We visited Martha’s day care home and she visited ours. We compared notes and bragged about our programs. “Where do you find qualified employees?  How much do you pay them? Do you have Worker’s Comp Insurance? Hennepin County is so weird!” we joked.

Weird and dangerous, but we did not yet understand that.

Only a couple of years after we met her, Lynne’s tremendous idealism and activism destroyed her life. It started small and innocently. One of Lynne’s several employees, a worker from a disadvantaged background, was mildly slapping and scolding babies when the child “touched herself” during diapering. The employee believed such behavior was “dirty”. Not unsanitary but “dirty” as akin to sin.

Soft-hearted reformer Martha could not bring herself to fire the woman. Instead she asked Hennepin County for help. At that time Hennepin County was highly active in training childcare providers about children’s sexuality and child sexual abuse. The County hired a theater troupe to teach providers the County’s peculiar theories of child sexual abuse. Early form of QAnon, seeing sex conspiracies everywhere.

Hennepin County sent out an “expert” to do an in-service training for Lynne and her employees. Unfortunately, the expert agreed with the slappy employee more than she agreed with Lynne: hitting the babies was perhaps discouraged, but the babies MUST be stopped from touching themselves during diapering. Babies touching themselves is “dirty”. The Hennepin County expert strongly expressed her concern that the babies were being sexually abused by their parents.

HENNEPIN COUNTY HAS ALWAYS BEEN DEEPLY, DEEPLY CONCERNED WITH “DIRTY” BEHAVIOR AMONG CHILDREN. At least one high level Hennepin County Licensing official was an early QAnon conspiracy believer. Very creepy!

The official County government opinion at the time was young children “abuse themselves” only if they are already being sexually abused by parents or family member. Lynne was alarmed by this attitude and these extreme ideas. She argued with the County expert (which was a life-destroying mistake). She pointed out all babies and toddlers are curious about the “diaper area”. Babies and toddlers at day care usually cannot reach their privates except during diapering. Diapers itch. All children are curious. That area is sensitive and might feel good to touch and scratch. (The American Academy of Pediatric Medicine agrees self-touching is normal, common, and harmless.)

Martha Lynne argued her point by giving examples of what she considered normal healthy children’s behaviors: Children look at each other’s “diaper area” when the opportunity presents. Children watch the babies being changed and ask questions and sometimes even try to “touch” the babies. They notice each other and sometimes giggle while changing into swimsuits (toddlers/preschoolers only, not school age).

Hennepin County’s highest-level licensing worker (the Quality Assurance Specialist) came out to talk to Martha Lynne. Martha argued by giving more examples of what she felt was normal and innocent behavior. Boy and girl preschoolers take naps in the same nap room. Sometimes very young children, especially girls, would self-stimulate during naps keeping themselves awake. A four-year-old boy teased a five-year-old girl, chasing her and trying to kiss her. Lynne admitted she taught the girl to hold up her finger (librarian style) and say “No, don’t kiss me!”

Hennepin County Prosecutors determined teaching the girl to say “No” to the boy was a felony on Martha’s part as the girl was under 16 and not eligible to give or withhold consent. The very same prosecutor who later confessed to sex trafficking teenage and adult women accused Lynne of a felony for teaching a five-year-old girl to say “no” to a boy who teased her.

Lynne argued with the Quality Assurance Specialist: We discourage “naughty” behaviors. We keep the parents informed. We may intervene. We do not punish.

Most horrifically, Lynne “confessed” to a preschool boy (probably the same one) interrupting preparations for swim classes by demonstrating he could hold a pencil in his butt cheeks. Martha told me she emphatically stopped him; dutifully maintaining her frown; told him it was unacceptable and dangerous. She failed to tell the naughty boy it was “dirty behavior”. She failed to punish the boy.

Mayo later told me she was trying to enlighten the QAS with her stories of happy, normal children. Martha Lynne felt the woman’s attitudes toward children were “medieval”. Unfortunately, to the QAS, Martha Lynne Mayo was admitting to high crimes and child sexual abuse. The gulf between these two activist evangelical women was unfathomable.

dMartha Lynne Mayo adored children. She considered them to be innocent and uncivilized, as taught in our Gustavus Adolphus child development class. Children are expected to make mistakes and be immature. Discipline is accomplished by leadership, setting an example, explaining, positive attention to good behavior, redirecting, and perhaps mild disapproval. Not punishment. Authoritative, NOT authoritarian. Martha passionately despised authoritarian people. As I have been saying, to me she was a hero.

AS I HAVE BEEN SAYING, TO ME SHE WAS A HERO.

After months of arguing among themselves, Hennepin County Day Care Licensing management decided that the children in Martha Lynne Mayo’s care were in “immediate danger”. They issued a Temporary Immediate Suspension (without court review or a court order) and sent police cars (as I was told) to collect the children and move them to safety.

Marian Turner and I were stunned and indignant. The highest integrity, most idealistic family childcare home in the state, beloved of her clients and community, was “dangerous for children”? The most active fighter for children’s rights, safety, welfare, and diversity was accused of child sexual abuse and neglect? Incomprehensible. Beyond our understanding.

We offered to help, and Martha accepted. None of the many family day care associations offered Mayo the slightest support. Rather, they cut her off, refused to respond to her inquiries and requests for aid. Even though people were horrified by her prosecution, no one was willing to speak up. Marian was a board member and sometimes President of the Hennepin County Family Day Care Association, HCFDCA. I was on the Executive Committee of the Greater Minneapolis Day Care Association.

Marian Turner and I, Michael Kauper, convinced the Day Care Associations to help indirectly. Each endorsed letters to the attention of Hennepin County Prosecutors describing ordinary industry standard practices: Yes, all day care facilities have toddler and preschool girls and boys sleep in the same nap room. Yes, nearly all babies occasionally touch themselves during diapering. Yes, minimal immature sexual curiosity happens and is perfectly normal.

None of the day care Associations defended Martha Lynn. They were too frightened. I testified at her trial as a character witness and “expert” on Family Day Care standards.

Lynne was found not guilty by the Administrative Law Judge, but it was too late. All day care homes subjected to the horrible TEMPORARY IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION (TIS) are closed for 7 to 9 months or more. According to Hennepin County officials themselves, even if the provider requests a review and then wins in court, her day care will be closed for seven to nine months.

Martha Lynne Mayo never recovered from this as far as I know. I lost track of her after she won at her initial hearing. All the children had long since moved to different programs. I understand that she eventually won some sort of appeal to recover damages. I heard she lost her home, and her marriage broke up.

Ordinarily mild and tolerant, MLM became apoplectic and almost mute when she tried to describe her rage at the injustice and cruelty of the Hennepin County officials toward her and her day care families. Massive PTSD.

An interesting side note:  The Assistant Hennepin County Prosecutor who led Mayo’s prosecution (persecution) later pleaded guilty to Sex Trafficking. He was importing undocumented immigrant teens and women for the use of the “Nice Guys Club”, wealthy businessmen, in his basement. The HC prosecutor favored women who had little English because they were easier to control.

Ten years later Marian and I hired Martha Lynne to work in our family day care home. She failed the criminal background check by Hennepin County due to her earlier prosecution. We fought, and her employment was eventually approved. (Adding to the growing pile of grievances harbored by the County against M&M Child Care. They hated us for defending MLM. And me for being male.)

That’s all I know as best I can remember. Martha Lynne Mayo was an active idealist and a hero. Marian Turner founded and hosted meetings for the influential Coalition on Provider Vulnerability largely because of Martha’s story.

Sadly, and all too relevant, during the years the CoPV was active Marian Turner heard from all too many Family Child Care Providers who were ALSO devastated and stunned by the behavior of government childcare officials. Suspended providers were NOT surprised to be corrected or punished for mistakes. Rather, these childcare providers were uniformly astonished and BETRAYED by government officials mendacious and cruel behavior when the childcare providers needed correction.