Father Catches Staff Verbally and Emotionally Abusing His Austistic Son

Here's a 17 minute recording and video of how the father of an autistic son discovered that teachers were bullying his autistic son at school.
The child, who the father says was previously kind, sweet, and gentle- a boy he'd never seen hit anybody- was getting trouble at school for hitting the teachers and throwing things and screaming- behavior he never engaged in anywhere else. So he wired his son to record his school day.  He caught teachers and aides discussing their drinking binges, their husbands, marital problems, arguments about whether one partner or the other should be sterilized.
He also caught the staff berating his son, calling him a b^^^^^, goading him to tears and lying to him about whether or not he would see his dad after his weekend with his mom. This lie was particularly cruel and totally unnecessary- there is no reason other than basic sadism.


On Thursday, April 26th, the local station reported this statement from the school superintendent:

"I want to assure our parents that the individuals who are heard on the recording raising their voices and inappropriately addressing children no longer work in the district," the statement also read.

 But the father says according to the minutes of a school board meeting the teacher was not fired. She was merely transferred and still works within the district. He also called the school district and was directed to her voicemail box to leave a message, so he made another video identifying her by name.

Oh, says the school district. Okay. Now she really is, um.... placed on paid administrative leave. As of Friday, the 27th., not quite as the school's initial claim:

The Cherry Hill teacher whose lawyers deny that she made the abusive statements to an autistic student heard on a now-viral YouTube video was placed on paid leave Friday.
"I wanted to be proactive rather than reactive," superintendent Maureen Reusche said. "My primary focus is the instructional environment in the building."

The aid appears to have been fired, but there were other staff members in the room, not one of whom reported the behavior, stopped it, or even mildly objected- nor did any of them attempt to comfort the child who they witnessed being sadistically goaded to tears through deliberate emotional abuse.

The recording also includes the aide telling the boy to shut up, to shut his mouth- the tone of voice is hateful and spiteful.  The father wrote the teacher and asked her if anybody ever told his son to shut up. The teacher replied that of course not, that had never happened, they did not treat children like that in the classroom.

The school district claims the teacher was not in the room at the time. The tapes last 6 1/2 hours, and the teacher claims to have been out of the room for an hour at a conference.

Chaifetz said Friday that even if Altenburg were out of the room for the first hour of the day, when many of the offensive comments aired in his video were reportedly made, there were offensive remarks on other portions of the recording.

Those, he said, included derogatory remarks about other children and adults laughing about a statement made about his son. Chaifetz said he was reviewing his recording and might release other portions of it. He said that he e-mailed Altenburg in February after hearing children being told to shut their mouths and that she told him the expression was not used in the class. He claims that was misleading.

The father has tried to protect the identity of the other students,but he also has evidence of the teacher and other school staff holding unprofessional conversations with each other about him and a requested IEP meeting- and they hold these conversations in front of his son:

Unfortunately, due to numerous students talking, I am unable to post audio of this part. However, it is important outline this story, demonstrating how the teacher was attempting to fix our IEP meeting by colluding with staff.
Here’s what happened: The Occupational Therapist (OT) walked into the room and the teacher, still upset that I asked for an IEP meeting to discuss Akian’s behaviors, talked to the OT negatively about me.
The two of them went on for approximately eight minutes talking about Akian, the IEP meeting and myself.  The OT says at one point “I said to the District have this meeting, because I am going to say ‘it’s you at home, end of story.’”
Here you have the school social worker, the teacher and the OT, all of whom are part of the IEP team, colluding with each other to walk into the IEP meeting that I requested and blame Akian’s behaviors on me.  This is unprofessional behavior and a clear violation of New Jersey’s Professional Standards for Educators and School Leaders. That IEP meeting was a trap. If not for this audio, I would have walked right into it. 

 Much more at the link.

I feel for this single parent, and he obviously loves his son. But something that disturbs me about this is that his son was obviously suffering for six months- he knew his boy was in distress, he knew the reports he was getting from his teachers were not reflections of who his son really is.  And after six months of interviews and IEP meetings, he decided to record his son's day.  Good for him. But....
To be clear, here, it's not the father I'm criticizing here, but the culture that has made public school so ingrained as the default position, the cult of the expert that is deeply entrenched in our society- these things blind parents and muddle our thinking skills, dull our responses.

I did the same thing- I sent the Equuschick to preschool and she hated it, loathed it, and complained every day of school.  I learned that her teacher thought she was totally nonverbal because she never said a word in class (her verbal skills were years in advance of her age)- but hadn't bothered to ask me about that. Yet I left her in preschool for three long months when I knew at one week that it wasn't a good fit.  Why? Because the teacher told me I should.  When I finally took her out, the timing was mainly because another teacher told I should.  It was like I needed permission from an authority figure before I could do what I knew in my gut was the right thing to do.  And I'm a rebel!

When we adopted the Cherub we investigated our local school district as we were willing to consider placing her in school assuming they could meet needs we couldn't.  That's what we were told by all the 'experts.'

The teacher's aide in the classroom where the Cherub would attend approached me privately, in tears, and told me absolutely not to put my daughter in that school. She recounted abuse that she had witnessed- very similar to that above, with a couple of worse instances. She said she had reported it to the school district and nothing would be done, and she was quitting at the end of the year because it was clear if she continued to complain she'd be fired.

Others, this time genuine experts, the homeschooling parents of other kids like our Cherub, pointed out that the last child they would ever put in school was their nonverbal child, because this is the child that can't tell you what's happening.

And the name of the game for school districts is Cover Up.  We know of another case where a child was grabbed by his teacher and shaken so hard her long nails pierced his skin through his clothing. The parents complained to the principal- who went to church with them and up until that point was their friend.  He insisted it never happened. He said it was impossible because the teacher had short fingernails. She'd gone home and cut them after the incident.