12/18/08 Part 2

How timely.....please see the following article on CNN< http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html, it's about that 13 boy who hung himself (with a string the school gave him to hold up his pants) and it shows the room he was stuck in which is nothign what the parents thought "time out" was. See below for a few snipets from the story about other children who endured grueling treatment. I'll warn you, it's awful, just awful. This is why we do what we do for tyler!.


A Tennessee mother alleged in a federal suit against the Learn Center in Clinton that her 51-pound 9-year-old autistic son was bruised when school instructors used their body weight on his legs and torso to hold him down before putting him in a "quiet room" for four hours. Principal Gary Houck of the Learn Center, which serves disabled children, said lawyers have advised him not to discuss the case.

• Eight-year-old Isabel Loeffler, who has autism, was held down by her teachers and confined in a storage closet where she pulled out her hair and wet her pants at her Dallas County, Iowa, elementary school. Last year, a judge found that the school had violated the girl's rights. "What we're talking about is trauma," said her father, Doug Loeffler. "She spent hours in wet clothes, crying to be let out." Waukee school district attorney Matt Novak told CNN that the school has denied any wrongdoing.

• A mentally retarded 14-year-old in Killeen, Texas, died from his teachers pressing on his chest in an effort to restrain him in 2001. Texas passed a law to limit both restraint and seclusion in schools because the two methods are often used together.