Kids Dieing FRom Abuse

Children Abused
A report published earlier last year by the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) provided

additional examples, including one in which a 7-year-old Wisconsin girl, who was diagnosed with an

emotional disturbance and ADHD, died of suffocation after several adult staff pinned her to the

floor in a “prone restraint” because she was blowing bubbles in her milk.

A handful of earlier accounts also exposed the widespread use in schools of “seclusion rooms” or

“time-out rooms”–basically, solitary confinement cells for difficult-to-control children. Mary Hallowell

wrote about one such case in her 2009 book Forgotten Rooms. According to an article the Atlanta

Journal-Constitution:

Education researcher Mary Hollowell spent months chronicling an alternative high school in rural

Georgia before she discovered the awful secret that continues to haunt her today. Walking with the

principal down a hall, Hollowell heard a loud pounding. She followed the principal into a room and

then through a connecting doorway that led to a solitary confinement cell double bolted from the

outside.

“The cell was dark inside and had a small, square window,” she said. “It was the kind of set-up you

saw in a mental institution, not a school.” Inside the cell was a boy Hollowell recognized; she had

tutored him in reading and even had artwork from him. “I felt like I had been punched in the stomach

when I realized what I was seeing,” she says. “The principal’s comment to me was that most people

didn’t know this room was there.”

*As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported: “Seclusion rooms are allowed in Georgia public

schools provided they are big enough for children to lie down, have good visibility and have locks

that spring open in case of an emergency such as a fire. In 2004, Jonathan King, 13, hanged himself in

one such room, a stark, 8-foot-by-8-foot ‘timeout’ room in a Gainesville public school.” Jonathan was

also a special ed student, who had ADHD and depression. He had talked about suicide to the

school psychologist, but she concluded it was “an escape or attention-getting technique,” according

to the Gainesville Times. A civil rights lawsuit brought by his parents was thrown out of federal court.

These are the sorts of abuses that H.R. 4247 seeks to address. And the pressing need for federal

legislation is clear from the GAO report: ”GAO found no federal laws restricting the use of

seclusion and restraints in public and private schools and widely divergent laws at the state level,”

it said. In addition, “GAO could not find a single Web site, federal agency, or other entity that

collects information on the use of these methods or the extent of their alleged abuse.”

Yet 153 members of Congress chose to vote against a law that would expose and limit what can in

some cases only be described as the torture of schoolchildren.

Perhaps not so shocking after all: In a country that condones torture not only in its military detention

centers, but in its state and federal prisons, immigration jails, and juvenile detention centers, it was

only a matter of time before it trickled down, even into our schools.