KUSA - It's all caught on tape: children strapped down in dental chairs, parents not allowed to watch and dentists competing for bonuses for doing the most work on their smallest patients.

The more work the dentists do, the more their clinics can bill Medicaid and get more of your taxpayer money.

9Wants to Know has learned a nationwide chain of clinics called Small Smiles is flying dentists from its clinics across the country to their Colorado clinics to teach dentists all of those procedures.

There are six Small Smiles clinics in Colorado (two in Denver, one in Thornton, one in Colorado Springs, one in Greeley and one in Pueblo) and there are 65 nationwide. The video in 9Wants to Know's story comes from a clinic in Washington D.C. that proudly invited a TV crew from WJLA-TV in to witness their dental care practices.

Now, the Colorado Dental Examiners Board is looking into the Small Smiles Dental clinics in Colorado to learn if some of those practices are being performed on children in Colorado, defying new regulations.

Those regulations went into effect two years ago following another 9Wants to Know investigation into the same chain of dental clinics. The Colorado regulations, which took affect in 2005, say that dentists need to get parents written permission to use papoose boards. A papoose board is a device that is used to strap down children, much like a straight jacket.

The dentists must also put their reasons for restraining kids in writing and check a child's vital signs every 15 minutes. The rules also allow parents to stay with their children during treatment. Other new rules enforced by Medicaid do not allow dentists to perform more than five procedures or put on five caps on one child in one visit in Colorado.

Despite the new rules, parents Jessie and Santia Mallory say the Small Smiles clinic in Thornton would not let them stay with their 2-year-old daughter during treatment when they took her for her first check-up in August this year. Victoria Mallory came out crying hysterically her parents told 9Wants to Know.

"She was shaking and crying, saying 'The doctor hurt me. The doctor was mean to me,'" said Jessie Mallory. "Her scream was terrifying."

Mallory says the dentists promised to notify him if Victoria had any problems. However, they did not do that; the Mallorys waited in the lobby not realizing Victoria was sobbing inside.

"They even said if she starts crying or screaming they'll come get us and you can't hear anything back there (in the lobby)," said Santia Mallory. "But the minute they opened the door, I heard her screaming."

The Mallorys were so distraught they took Victoria to another dental clinic. While Small Smiles had told them Victoria's teeth were fine, Foothills Pediatrics said Victoria needed eight crowns on her back teeth.

"Small Smiles said she was fine, come back in six months," said Santia Mallory. "So when we got a second opinion, they told us if we would have went back in six months, her teeth would have been rotten and she would have been in pain."

When the Mallorys asked for Victoria's x-rays, Small Smiles refused several times and hung on up them, according to Jessie Mallory.

Before the new regulations took effect in Colorado, 9Wants to Know found that children were being traumatized and hurt when they went to a chain of clinics in Colorado. Some were strapped down for more than an hour in the papoose boards. They vomited, peed their pants and screamed for their mothers, but the dentists did not release them, numerous parents told 9Wants to Know.

"He was soaking wet from head to toe, like someone had just drenched him with a bucket of water," Vicky Wilson told 9NEWS in October 2004 about her 4-year-old son, Rand.

Wilson said dentists at the Children's Dental Clinic in Thornton, now called "Small Smiles" strapped Rand in a papoose board while a dental assistant held his throat. When Rand came out of the office crying hysterically and soaked from sweat and tears, Wilson filed a police report.

"Parents, if they were to leave marks like was left on my son, their children would be taken away from them and they would be put in jail," said Wilson.

9NEWS obtained photographs of other children who were left scraped, bruised and battered from visits to the chain of dental clinics.

Colorado dentists used to own the "Small Smiles" clinics, but they sold their shares last year to their old management company, FORBA, which stands for For Better Access, according to FORBA Vice President Todd Cruse. FORBA, which is based in Pueblo, Colorado and Tennessee, is a privately held company.

Cruse would not tell 9NEWS about the members of the new company. However, WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C. reported that the most high profile investor in the national network of clinics is the politically-connected, Washington-based Carlyle Group. Its investors have included former President George Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker and liberal financier George Soros, according to WJLA-TV. The Caryle Group told the TV station it has no control over management of the company.

Cruse told 9NEWS dentists are flown to Colorado for orientation. He says they do put Colorado children in papoose boards, but only under the state's new regulations.

Cruse also said that Small Smiles does not have a policy about separating parents from children. However, a manual given to dentists obtained by WJLA-TV shows, in writing, Small Smiles' policy to not allow parents in the treatment room with their children. The manual says the only exceptions are for the disabled and deaf.

Cruse told 9NEWS that is an old policy and that dentists at Small Smiles use a new policy today. He said he would try to provide that new policy to 9NEWS. He also blamed much of the video on old practices that he says are not practiced today by the new management company at Small Smiles. The video was shot within the last three months.

Click here to read the entire letter Small Smiles sent to 9NEWS.

After the story was aired by WJLA-TV, the Smiles Smiles clinics in Langley Park Maryland and the District were suspended for 45 days while government and insurance investigators probe the clinic finances, according to the station.

A letter from Doral, the company that coordinates government dental services for major health care organizations in Maryland and the District, said the story "raised serious questions about the delivery of quality dental care" in the Small Smiles Clinics.

Meanwhile, Victoria Mallory will get the eight crowns she needs in the near future. Her parents say they will never go to Small Smiles again.