Canadian singer Alanis Morissette was sued by her former nanny, Bianca Cambeiro, who claims she was forced to work in hard conditions and long hours, Fox News Latino reported.
The suit claims the "You Oughta Know" singer held the nanny "hostage" for 12 straight hours, Blogamole informed. Cambeiro's attorneys said that, for an entire night, she was forced to sit quietly in Morissette's baby nursery without taking breaks.
The former employee filed the lawsuit at the Los Angeles Superior Court; she is seeking $100,000 in damages and $30,000 in unpaid wages, according to Fox News Latino.
Although the singer's reps have not commented on the lawsuit, the singer addressed the issue on her Twitter account. "Grateful for all your heartfelt support around these hurtful and cruel allegations. Truthfulness will prevail. I love you, x a," she wrote.
In 2011, Cambeiro was hired by Grammy award-winning singer and her husband, Mario Treadway, to care for their son Ever Imre Morissette-Treadway, who was born in 2010.
The nanny, that said she worked 3-4 days a week from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. at $25 an hour, claimed in the suit she was denied breaks and was never paid overtime. Cambeiro also was told to never leave the couple's son alone while he was sleeping, unless the day nanny or one of the parents was present. According to the suit, she also had work an occasional seven-day stint without overtime when Morissette went on tour, according to Fox News Latino.
Cambeiro worked for the couple until March 2013, and it's not clear whether she quit or was fired. Radar Online reported that in January 2012, the nannies asked the singer's accountant why they weren't being paid overtime, and were told, "We don't do that."
The 39-year-old artist talked about motherhood during a 2011 in a blog for iVillage. "I remain baffled at how little I was prepared for what was to come," wrote Morissette. "It was all I could do not to cry out for the kind of mothering that I was intending to offer my lil' one. Someone who could swoop in and just DO THIS FOR ME while they pet my trembling head, while I whimpered in the corner... And there was no doula alive that could have reached in and taught me what I have learned through experience. There was no midwife who could show me how to grow up, warp-speed from complicated contemplative maiden to accountable matriarch."
"These things required months of growth and calibrating!" added the singer. "And here I naively thought that I would arrive as a MOM at the same time as my lil' boy arrived as a SON. The latter waaay preceded the former. But necessity precedes form sometimes."