The Nanny Who Put the Children Online

Pulse Stories are first-person stories written by RRSource. This is not one real person's account: names, places and details are invented, but the events reflect situations documented in public reporting.

It was a Wednesday, and I had left work early for once, and I was standing at the school gate feeling smug about it.

A woman I didn't recognise smiled at my daughter as she ran out and said, "Hi, Ava! How did the swimming gala go? Did you beat your time?"

Ava beamed and said yes. The woman said, "I knew you would," and walked off.

I asked Ava who that was. She shrugged. "I don't know. Lots of people know me from Mia's videos."

Mia was our nanny.

Forty-three thousand

I found the account in about ninety seconds. I sat in my car outside the school and scrolled, and my whole body went hot and then cold.

Forty-three thousand followers. Hundreds of posts. A day in the life of a nanny. My kitchen. My children. Ava doing a handstand in her school uniform, the crest perfectly visible. My son, Leo, four years old, crying in the bath — "tantrum tuesday 😂" — with 60,000 views. Their first names in the captions. The name of Ava's swimming club. The playground at the end of our road, tagged. A video of our front door, "back home with my little ones!"

My little ones.

There were comments from other mums, sweet ones, and from people with no profile pictures, not sweet at all. Such a beautiful girl. Which park is this? More of her please.

I opened my car door and was sick in the gutter outside my daughter's primary school.

"Everyone does it"

When I confronted Mia that evening, she genuinely didn't understand. That was almost the worst part.

"I never showed your faces," she said — meaning mine and my husband's. "Loads of nannies do this. It's content. The kids love it. Ava asks to be filmed." She said brands had started sending her things. She said she was building something for her future. She said I was overreacting.

I asked her if she had ever read the comments. She went quiet.

I asked her who the woman at the gate was. She didn't know. She had no idea who any of the forty-three thousand were.

We let her go that night. She deleted the account, eventually, after three days and a lawyer's letter. But the videos had already been downloaded and reposted in places I will not describe and cannot get them out of. A child protection specialist told me, very kindly, that I should assume some of those images will exist somewhere forever.

What I am angry about

I'm angry at Mia, yes. But I'm angrier at myself, and at how normal it all was.

I checked her references. I checked her first aid certificate. I had her background checked. Nobody — not the agency, not the checklists, not me — had asked a single question about what she posted, or what she would do with my children's faces. It never occurred to me that the danger wouldn't come through the front door. It would go out through it, one video at a time.

Ava still asks why Mia doesn't come any more. I tell her that Mia had to go and do something else. I don't tell her that there are strangers who know her swimming times. I don't tell her that I had the locks changed.

Behind the story

Why it matters: Photos and videos of children can reveal far more than intended — school uniforms, clubs, routines, locations and names — and, once shared publicly, can be copied and reposted beyond anyone's control. Child safety organisations in many countries advise against sharing identifiable images of children publicly, and data protection laws in many places treat images of identifiable people as personal data.

Rules to agree in writing with any nanny or childcare worker:

• No photos or videos of the children posted anywhere without explicit written permission
• Never share names, schools, clubs, locations or the family home
• Photos shared only privately with parents
• Location services off when photographing the children
• Clear consequences, including termination, for breaching the policy

If it has already happened: ask for immediate removal; report the content to the platform; keep evidence; seek advice from a child protection or online safety organisation in your country. Read how to vet a nanny — and add a social media conversation to every interview.