Pre-K teacher accused of "sustained pattern" of physical abuse against 4- and 5-year-old children in lawsuit

A major child care chain in the Philadelphia area is being sued after what attorneys say was a "sustained pattern" of physical and racial abuse of children by a pre-K teacher.

Attorneys representing a group of five children, ages 4 and 5, allege The Malvern School failed to intervene as abuse continued at a location in Robbinsville, New Jersey. The suit says Malvern had inadequate hiring and training procedures to prevent abuse, and lacked "meaningful safeguards" against abusive conduct as well.

CBS News Philadelphia has reached out to The Malvern School for comment on the suit and will update this article when we hear back.

The suit, filed in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County, centers around Ekta Dwarkesh, a pre-K teacher at the Robbinsville location who was charged in April 2024 with endangering the welfare of children. 

Dwarkesh, a Princeton resident, was sentenced to four years' probation in May 2025 — after pleading guilty to a 3rd-degree charge of endangering the welfare of children, according to court records.

Behavior by Dwarkesh, according to the suit, included "striking and forcibly grabbing children, throwing them into classroom furniture, routinely calling them 'stupid,' deliberately withholding bathroom access as punishment, humiliating children who had accidents in front of classmates, and forcing children to retrieve and eat items from garbage."

Other allegations say Dwarkesh would call the children "stupid" and "dumb" and tell them that the darker their skin, the worse they were. Dwarkesh also allegedly withheld bathroom breaks from the children as a form of punishment, per the suit.

The children were also told that if they reported the abuse, they would not be believed and would get into trouble. The suit claims the conduct nonetheless was reported, but Malvern "failed to properly or sufficiently investigate" it.

The suit says after one student reported abuse to a parent, that parent contacted the school and the Robbinsville location's executive director allowed the parent to review surveillance video that captured an incident. In that incident, Dwarkesh was seen throwing the student to the ground and landing an open-hand strike on his face, after the student threw a book during playtime in the classroom.

The suit seeks punitive and compensatory damages for alleged negligence and emotional distress, and to reimburse the parents for medical and psychological treatments that have occurred as a result of the alleged abuse.

"The lawsuit seeks to hold The Malvern School and its corporate entities accountable for the alleged failures in child-safety practices and supervision," attorneys from the firm Haggerty, Goldberg, Schleifer & Kupersmith said in a news release.

Teachers at The Malvern School have faced criminal charges before. In 2021, a Brookhaven, Pennsylvania woman, Victoria Aronson, was charged with physically and verbally abusing children between the ages of 14 and 16 months at the Westtown location. In one instance, Aronson put a baby in a headlock, CBS Philadelphia reported at the time.

The suit says another Malvern teacher, Kendall Fleisch, pleaded guilty to criminal charges that she abused a 7-month-old child at the chain's Horsham, Pennsylvania, location in June 2020. Court documents show she was sentenced to three years' probation and ordered not to have any unsupervised contact with minors or to work or volunteer with children.