A Florida family is furious after video of a toddler terrified of the Easter Bunny went viral.
You know the one that shows the screaming, horrified child backing away from her seat? In a few videos, footage of Donald Trump replaces the Easter Bunny, making for what some may consider a classic joke.
Except it’s not.
“When we did see it, it already had gone everywhere. Any place you look on the internet, my granddaughter is there,” Mary Bryson-Robinson told Click Orlando. “I’m looking at just pure horror in her face, and I’m wondering, ‘How could that be on the internet for anything good?’”
According to Bryson-Robinson, when she picked up her granddaughter, 2-year-old Surai, from her day care, Around the World Learning Center in Kissimmee, Fla., workers merely said that Surai had been afraid of the bunny, but didn’t elaborate.
What wasn’t mentioned to the family was that a worker had recorded the entire March 29 incident and then shared it on Snapchat. From there, the footage went viral without the family’s knowledge. This especially was a breach of trust, the family says, since the family had signed a waiver prior to the incident specifically prohibiting staff from taking or sharing footage or photos of Surai.
“My granddaughter looked petrified. Her face changed. It was not the same child that I dropped off that day or the child that I know,” Bryson-Robinson said. “For a bunny of that size to appear, I’m sure it scared the daylights out of her.”
The grandmother said she is especially upset because even as Surai is in obvious terror, at no point in the video is any worker shown going to comfort her or quell her fears.
The family is also upset that there have been racial comments attached to the video.
“People use it as a racial thing. How people can, you know, ‘Black people are “that” way.’ For a 2-year-old, it is just agony to go through,” Bryson-Robinson added.
An employee at the day care told Click Orlando that the incident was being investigated, but when the news station followed up, the owner of the facility said she had no comment.
As for little Surai, she has since been taken out of the day care because of what the family says is the breach of trust that caused her image to go viral.