Ontario girl claims teacher forced her to eat rotten banana thrown in trash

Watch the video above: Ontario girl claims teacher forced her to eat rotten banana thrown in trash. Cindy Pom reports. 

TORONTO – A Simcoe mother is outraged after a substitute teacher at her daughter’s school allegedly forced the 8-year-old to eat a banana she had thrown into the garbage.

Jordan Stewart, the girl’s mother, said her daughter, Peighton, came home from school Thursday and told her that she had thrown out her banana and then the teacher retrieved it and tried to teach her daughter a lesson.

Peighton told Global News the food looked “rotten” and had “black spots on it.”

“I felt I would be in trouble if I didn’t eat it,” she said.

Stewart went to the school that day and tried to talk to the principal. But she happened upon the substitute teacher who told her daughter to eat the banana and had, what she called, a “heated” conversation.

Stewart said the teacher told her, she “was just trying to teach her good food values.”

“She proceeded to tell me ‘it’s not the first time I fed her something that was thrown into the garbage.’”

Stewart’s worried the teacher was bullying her child and met with the principal the next day who allegedly tried to reassure her that the teacher wasn’t acting maliciously. On Monday, Stewart called the Children’s Aid Society (CAS).

The school board is investigating.

In a statement to Global News, a spokesperson for the Conseil scolaire de district catholique Centre-Sud (A Catholic, French-language school board serving southwestern Ontario) said they have received “new information” about the incident and, along with the CAS, are investigating and are declining comment until both investigations are done.