What happened at BrightPath Avon was not okay.

A daycare on Simsbury Road in Avon, four buildings, closed since May. One teacher the kids called Mr. John, six criminal cases against him now, and four families already in Hartford Superior Court. If your child was enrolled there, in his classroom or any classroom, and you have been turning something over since spring, this is about you.

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This applies to you no matter what

Your child is three, or four, and can't tell you much. That's true of every family already in court, and the first of them filed for a boy who was 3.
There is no video of your child. The center's cameras only reached back to March 2, police said, and one of the six criminal cases has no footage at all. It was built on what a 4-year-old told his parents.
Your child wasn't in his classroom. He covered other rooms, and BrightPath has told parents he also worked shifts at its Simsbury, Windsor and West Hartford centers.
Nobody from BrightPath ever called you about him. The four complaints say parents weren't warned; that is one of the things the families are suing over.
You pulled your child out months before the arrest, or years before. The deadline on a child's own claim in Connecticut is decades away. Details below.
You're a grandparent, a former employee, an aunt asking for a family that can't right now. Reach out anyway.

The BrightPath Avon case: what the public record says, and when

We didn't write what's below. Avon police did, and judges in Hartford and Torrington, and the state's child care licensing office, and the reporters who covered it, and we link to every one of them. We don't add to it. Mr. Berrios-Otero has pleaded not guilty to every charge. BrightPath and its parent companies have asked the court to dismiss the civil cases and have admitted nothing, and where we write "alleges" we mean exactly that.

April 1 and 2, 2026

Avon police arrested Jan Carlos Berrios-Otero, 29, a staff member at BrightPath Avon Early Learning and Child Care Center, 144 Simsbury Road, after the center's administrators called them about his contact with a child. Two charges to start with: risk of injury to a minor, and fourth-degree sexual assault. He was in court the next day. Bond, $1 million. House arrest, ankle monitor. And a prosecutor told the judge that the center's own surveillance video pointed to five more children. Daily Voice.

April 8, 2026

The first lawsuit. A mother filed in Hartford Superior Court for her 3-year-old son, against Educational Play Care, Ltd. and Busy Bees US Holdings Limited, the two companies behind BrightPath (Roe v. Educational Play Care, HHD-CV26-5093159-S). The complaint alleges he abused the boy over several months before March 30, and that the center failed to investigate "after being placed upon notice of suspicious and/or alarming activities" by him, failed to look into "prior complaints," and failed to warn parents. The complaint (Connecticut Judicial Branch).

Late April 2026

Detectives went through every hour of classroom video the center still had. It reached back only to March 2, and he worked 22 shifts in that stretch. Police charged him again: six incidents, five boys between 3 and 5, every one at nap time. Two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a minor and five counts each of fourth-degree sexual assault and illegal sexual contact with a victim under 16. Hartford Courant.

May 1, 2026

The state's Office of Early Childhood accepted BrightPath's surrender of the license for two of the four buildings at the Avon site, effective that Friday, three weeks earlier than planned. Its statement said information had come to light that "raised significant concerns about child health and safety and the overall management of the program." The office said the closure affected 36 children. The rest of the campus closed May 22. NBC Connecticut.

May 11, 2026

Two more families sued in Hartford Superior Court, against BrightPath and the same two parent companies, and a fourth followed two days later (HHD-CV26-5093566-S, -5093567-S and -5093600-S). By then he had six criminal cases pending. The same week BrightPath's spokesperson confirmed he had also worked at its centers in Simsbury, in West Hartford on Park Road and in Windsor on Day Hill Road. Hartford Courant.

June 3, 2026

A sixth child. The new warrant says a 4-year-old who had been in his classroom for a year told his parents at bath time in early March; they took it for silliness until the arrest. No video, because the footage didn't go back that far. Charges of illegal sexual contact with a victim under 16 and fourth-degree sexual assault, bail set at $100,000 on top of the rest. Police wrote that other parents had noticed minor injuries on their children before the arrest and hadn't read them as abuse. WFSB.

July 24, 2026

State senators met five of the families and asked the Attorney General and the Office of Early Childhood to investigate BrightPath, which still runs 24 other licensed programs in Connecticut. The Courant reported that Berrios-Otero remains held on bonds totaling $4.1 million across six pending cases, has pleaded not guilty to all of it, and that the cases are pending in Superior Court in Torrington. No plea deal and no trial date has been reported. Hartford Courant.

September 2026 update

All four civil cases are open. BrightPath's companies moved to dismiss (May 29 in the first case, July 17 in the other three), answered the first complaint with special defenses on July 22, and on August 24 asked to move the cases to the complex litigation docket; the families objected. Nothing has been decided, and the next short calendar in the first case is September 21, 2026. Docket HHD-CV26-5093159-S (Connecticut Judicial Branch).

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from September 2026 update. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a BrightPath Avon lawsuit

Not only the man in the classroom. The criminal cases are his to answer, in Torrington. The four civil cases are a different thing, and they are the part most parents don't know they can do. They name Educational Play Care, Ltd., the Windsor-based company that ran the Avon center, and Busy Bees US Holdings Limited, BrightPath's parent company. A licensed center takes a 3-year-old for the whole working day, and it owes that child supervision, and owes the parents a warning when something is wrong. That is the whole theory.

What the complaints say BrightPath knew is the center of it. The first one alleges the center had been "placed upon notice of suspicious and/or alarming activities" by him and didn't investigate, that there were "prior complaints" it never looked into, and that parents were never warned. A later complaint alleges the abuse of one 4-year-old ran from August 2024 to April 2026, not one month. The families' lawyers go further and say, out loud, that complaints about him weren't taken seriously and that nobody was watching the classroom cameras. Those are allegations. BrightPath has moved to dismiss and says it reported the March 31 incident to police, the licensing agency and DCF the day it learned of it.

The Avon center is gone, and that changes nothing. The defendants are the companies, which still operate 24 licensed programs in Connecticut, and Connecticut's Supreme Court has held that the child abuse deadline law reaches the institution whose negligence let it happen, not only the abuser. A lawyer looks at the companies and at their insurance, not at an empty building on Simsbury Road.

Your deadline: the Connecticut statute of limitations for a child's sexual abuse claim

For the child, the clock is measured in decades. Take a boy who was 3 at BrightPath Avon this spring. He turns 21 somewhere in the early 2040s, and only then does his thirty years begin to run, which puts his deadline out in the 2070s. That's what the statute does (General Statutes § 52-577d, as rewritten effective October 1, 2019) for anyone abused before age 21 on or after that date, and every day this teacher spent in that classroom falls after it. Anything older than October 2019 gets the earlier rule instead, thirty years past the age of majority, which is still a long time. No one is going to tell a BrightPath family they're too late.

Here is the honest catch, and it's why we don't tell you to wait. That long clock belongs to the child, for the child's own claim. A parent's own claims, for what you paid and what you went through, may sit under Connecticut's ordinary negligence deadline, which can be as short as two years from the injury (§ 52-584). Whether that applies to you is a lawyer's call, not ours, and it is the kind of thing that gets missed when a family decides to "see how the criminal case goes" first.

The other reason is evidence. The center's video only went back to March 2. The attendance records, the classroom assignments, who filled in where and when, who raised what with whom: that lives in BrightPath's files, and the four families already in court are the ones getting it, through discovery, now. A family that comes forward in 2031 can still file. It will be working from a colder record. Talk to a lawyer now; deciding comes after.

Your situation still qualifies even if

Your child has never said a word about it. Most three-year-olds can't. The first criminal case began with what a parent noticed at home, and the sixth with one sentence at bath time.
You noticed something at the time, a scratch, a change at bedtime, and told yourself it was nothing. Police wrote that other parents did exactly that.
Your child was in a different building, or a different classroom, or only there part-time.
You kept your child enrolled until the end, in May. Plenty of families had nowhere else to go on a week's notice.
You've already talked to the police, or to DCF, or to nobody.
You've moved, or you live over the line in Massachusetts or New York now.

Facilities covered

BrightPath Avon Early Learning and Child Care Center, 144 Simsbury Road, Avon, all four buildings · the BrightPath centers in Simsbury, in West Hartford on Park Road and in Windsor on Day Hill Road, where BrightPath says he filled in · any other BrightPath or Busy Bees center in Connecticut. If your child was somewhere else in the chain, the questions still work. Answer them and say so on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue BrightPath daycare?

Four families already have, in Hartford Superior Court, and their cases name the two companies behind BrightPath, not only the former employee. Whether your family can depends on when your child was there and what happened, which is what the questions above sort out.

What happened at BrightPath in Avon, CT?

A teacher there, Jan Carlos Berrios-Otero, was arrested on April 1, 2026 after the center's administrators reported concerns about his contact with a child. Police later charged him in six cases involving six boys between 3 and 5, all at nap time, five of the six on the classroom cameras. He has pleaded not guilty. Four families sued the company in Hartford, the state accepted the surrender of part of the center's license on May 1, and the whole site closed May 22, 2026.

What's the Connecticut statute of limitations on a child sexual abuse claim?

Decades, for the child's own claim. Thirty years, and the thirty doesn't even start until the child turns 21. That's General Statutes § 52-577d as it has read since October 1, 2019, and it covers everything at BrightPath Avon. A child who was 3 there has until the 2070s. A parent's own claims may run on a much shorter clock, which is a question for a lawyer, and soon.

My child was at BrightPath Avon but nothing seemed wrong. Should I still reach out?

That is your call, and nobody on our end will push you past it. The sixth criminal case had no video; it started with a comment at bath time the parents first took as a joke. Police wrote that other parents had noticed small injuries and not connected them. If something has nagged at you since spring, that is reason enough to ask.

Has the criminal case against the daycare worker been decided?

No. The last public report we have is from late July 2026: bonds totaling $4.1 million, not guilty pleas in all six cases, everything pending in Superior Court in Torrington. No plea deal, no trial date. The civil cases run on their own calendar, separate from the criminal one, and they don't need a conviction. We update this page within three days of anything new.

How much does a daycare sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

How much is a BrightPath settlement worth?

We won't put a number on this page, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nothing has been settled and nothing has been decided; the companies have asked the court to dismiss the cases. It depends on what happened to your child and what BrightPath knew, and a lawyer will tell you plainly after looking at your facts.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed CT attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

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Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.