School Aide Charged With Aggravated Child Abuse
September 13, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
A Venice, California, school aide, Richard Green, has been charged with aggravated child abuse after grabbing a 17-year-old autistic student and shoving his head into a wall last Monday, today’s Herald Tribune reports. Green had worked with special needs students for the past nine years, but this was the first time he had worked as an aide for autistic students, and he was not scheduled for training in crisis intervention procedures until next week. The father of the autistic student is quoted as saying, “”In general I don’t think that is the type of behavior they expect from a teacher’”—–yes indeed.
This is the true issue affecting autistic children and more time and energy should be given to combat it.
“..Green, who is married and has two adult children, is the second school staff member in Sarasota County’s schools arrested this year and accused of abusing special education students. …”
Well, I guess it’s good to see that in at least one place in Florida they’re starting to get the idea that it’s not good to abuse kids.
Joe
Well, thank Gosh for Ms. McNeil following and stopping Mr. Green. (Does anyone know how to say, “I am at a loss as to what to do–can you help me?”.) If after 9 years of experience, even without specific training, although with general training, the best he could figure was to smack a student’s head into a wall–twice–and yell so loudly in a closed room that it could be heard 50 feet away, it makes me wonder if this is the first time that something abusive has occurred.
CS said,
This is the true issue affecting autistic children and more time and energy should be given to combat it.
Agreed. This is the thing that concerns me more than any issue offered by my daughter’s autism–that she might be mistreated or hurt or have negative behavior shaped or escalated in the interest of getting an “education” or “training”.
In searching for a little more about this particular incident, a couple of somewhat related articles came up. Both eyebrow raising in their own way,
Vicki Carr-Rodriguez: Injuries, class disruptions caused by unruly special ed students not isolated incidents
(Carr-Rodriguez is vice president of the St. Lucie County [FL] Classroom Teachers Association and Classified Unit. )
Friday, September 12, 2008
in response to
Colleen Wixon’s article, Mistreatment of autistic students is an ‘epidemic,’ some Treasure Coast [FL] parents sayAug. 22, which spoke of the epidemic of “abuses” of special education (specifically autistic) children that parents reported to the state’s hotline.
This is CA news and first I have read of it, but way behind in my google alerts too. Now I will read the tribune story.
It looks like this is in Florida and not CA.