Autistic Girl, 8, Arrested at School

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jrknothead
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14 Jan 2009, 2:06 pm

Parents Consider Legal Action After Autistic Girl, 8, Arrested at School

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Evelyn Towry Was Cuffed, Led Away by Police After Scuffle Over School Party
By SARAH NETTER
Jan. 14, 2008
The mother of an 8-year-old autistic girl who was arrested after a scuffle with her teachers said it was horrifying to watch her daughter be led away in handcuffs from her northern Idaho elementary school.

A mother is enraged at the response to her 8-year-old's behavior in school.Police in Bonner County, Idaho, charged the girl, Evelyn Towry, with battery after the arrest Friday at Kootenai Elementary School.

Even though prosecutors dismissed the case Tuesday, the family is considering legal action against the school. They say their daughter was physically restrained to the point of causing bruises and is now tormented by memories of the incident.

Spring Towry said she got to the school Friday just in time to see 54-pound Evelyn -- who was diagnosed at age 5 with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism -- being walked to a police car with two officers at her side.

"She started screaming 'Mommy, I don't want to go! What are batteries? What are batteries?'" Towry said. "She didn't even know what she was arrested for."

Towry, who lives in Ponderay, said Evelyn told her that she had been refused entry into a school Christmas party that had been delayed until after the holidays because of a string of snow days, because she refused to take off her beloved "cow costume" -- a hoodie with cow ears and a tail.

Towry said Evelyn, who loves Spongebob Squarepants, told her she was put in a separate classroom away from the party, but when she tried to leave, the teachers told her to stay put. Evelyn did not listen, Towry said, and the adults physically restrained her.

"She reacted in a violent way to the physical restraint," Towry said.

Towry said her daughter demonstrated for her how she was held down by her arms and legs. And Towry videotaped the thumb-sized bruises she says were left on Evelyn's legs from the incident.

"She said 'I was very scared,'" Towry said. "She told me she was being hurt."

Dick Cvitanich, superintendent of the Lake Pend Oreille School District, which includes the school where Evelyn was a student, said the school called police because "there was escalating behavior that resulted in what we perceived to be an assault on staff."

At a hearing on the case Tuesday, the prosecutor "said that he didin't think at this time it would be beneficial to pursue it becauase of her age and, of course, her condition," Towry said.

Evelyn was at court for the hearing, but "she didn't exactly know what was going on," Towry said.

Cvitanich said Evelyn's outburst Friday was the culmination of a series of incidents "that demanded staff intervention."

"It's definitely not typical," he said of the decision to call police on a child as young as Evelyn, "and not something we particularly want to do or like to do."

Inappropriate Reaction From School Officials?
The school's response to Evelyn's outburst and the string of events that led to it were completely inappropriate, says Dr. Pauline Filipek, associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, and pediatric nurse practitioner Teri Brook, who share a practice specializing in pediatric neurology.

Brook, the mother of a 17-year-old daughter with Asperger's, said children with high-functioning autism create the illusion that they are capable of communicating in the same way as children who do not have developmental disabilities.

In reality, Brook said, they may have an animalistic "fight or flight" mentality when it comes to confrontation. Many have "tactile defensiveness," meaning they are hyper-sensitive to any type of unwanted physical contact.

Filipek said similar incidents with autistic children are not uncommon, noting that one of her patients was recently ejected from his synagogue for attacking other children.

But charging Evelyn with battery, she said, implied that she intended to hurt her teachers when Evelyn's violent response to being restrained was a "gut-level" reaction.

"It really concerns me, to be perfectly blunt, that the school does not understand autism any better than that," Filipek said.

Cvitanich said Kootenai Elementary School includes a mix of mainstream and special education classes for children with disabilities. Children with severe disabilities, he said, are taught in a specialized program that has a smaller student-teacher ratio.

"They're mainstreamed as much as possible," he said.

Towry said her daughter didn't even meet the minimum age requirement of 10 to be booked at the county juvenile detention center.

Bonner County Police Lt. Ror Lakewold said the police report indicated the child -- who he declined to name because of her age -- "hit, kicked and spit on teachers."

Lakewold said there was also a complaint that the child grabbed a teacher in a "sexually sensitive place," not in a sexual way, but to cause pain.

Towry said that complaint stemmed from Evelyn pinching her teacher's breast, but she believes Evelyn wasn't aiming for any spot in particular. She was just fighting to be let loose.

"Teachers and the principal wished to pursue charges because they felt there were ongoing problems and this was the only way to resolve it," Lakewold said.

But Towry said her daughter thinks she got into so much trouble simply because she didn't want to take off her cow costume.

When asked what she likes best about school, Evelyn responded quickly and emphatically.

"Nothing," she said. "I don't like school."

And Towry said Evelyn won't be going back to Kootenai Elementary School, where she has been suspended for between two and 10 days.

"I fear for her safety and mental well-being," she said.

They haven't decided yet if Evelyn's 6-year-old sister, who does not have a developmental disability, will remain there or be transferred along with Evelyn.

Nothing formal has been filed yet, but she and her husband are considering legal action, Towry said.

"I would like them to learn a lesson that they should not treat children with disabilities in this manner," she said.

There's a lot of children with autism in the world now, she pointed out, and school officials need to learn how to properly discipline them.

Raising a Child With Asperger's
Towry said there was no indication there was anything wrong with Evelyn, the third of her four children, when she was a baby.

"All she really wanted from me as a baby was to nurse," Towry said, adding that Evelyn spoke early, walked early and hit all of her other developmental goals either on time or ahead of schedule.

Towry said she and her husband started getting calls about Evelyn's behavior when she was in kindergarten, before they moved to Ponderay. School officials told them the little girl would act out by making animal noises or stomping her feet.

"I guess I probably knew there was something wrong with her," Towry said. "When you're a parent it's difficult to think there's anything wrong with your child."

But it wasn't until they moved to Ponderay and put Evelyn into kindergarten at Kootenai that they got a diagnosis. Towry said she was called to the school on Evelyn's first day when her teacher said the girl began acting out in class, again making animal noises among other behaviors.

When the Towrys took the teacher's recommendation and had their daughter tested, they were shocked by the diagnosis.


"It scared me," Towry said. "I had no idea what Asperger's Syndrome was."

In Towry's mind at the time, autistic children drooled, were disconnected, didn't talk, didn't communicate. And none of that was Evelyn.

Towry said Evelyn isn't a perfect child at home. She sometimes gets into shoving matches or the like with her younger sister over sibling rivalry-type issues, but Towry said those situations are easily diffused with words and have never risen to the level of what Evelyn and police say occurred Friday at Kootenai Elementary School.

"She was not a bad kid," Towry said.



TallyMan
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14 Jan 2009, 2:19 pm

<Sarcasm>Being America it wouldn't surprise me if the police had tazered her or just shot her in the head</sarcasm>

It is time everyone who works with children is educated to be aware of the various types of behaviour that can be expected from various types of children... and the appropriate way for them to handle this. In England teachers and teaching assistants must now attend courses to educate them in these things.

Interestingly a family member who is a teaching assistant who recently attended such a course was able to identify her husband as an aspie purely as a result of the course!

Kids at the age of 8 can be scarred for life regarding their interest in education. When I was that age forty years ago my lasting memory was of being excluded from class for reasons I could not understand. I grew to hate school and education in general. This situation didn't reverse until I was around 14 years old. Teachers can do a lot of harm to children when they fail to act appropriately.


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gina-ghettoprincess
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14 Jan 2009, 2:35 pm

I didn't know making animal noises was an autistic trait! I used to do that when I first started school, it got me in trouble on my first day, just like the girl in the article. 8O


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14 Jan 2009, 2:43 pm

gina-ghettoprincess wrote:
I didn't know making animal noises was an autistic trait! I used to do that when I first started school, it got me in trouble on my first day, just like the girl in the article. 8O


I'm 48 and still make animal noises :oops: My dogs like it anyway, and my cat impression sends them wild.


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philosopherBoi
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14 Jan 2009, 3:21 pm

This is what happens when we do nothing to prevent organizations like Autism Speaks and Dan along with people like Jenny McCarthy to fill people's heads with lies. Anyways is it just me or did the article kinda say the teacher assaulted the girl?



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14 Jan 2009, 3:26 pm

This is very sad. This second grade girl got in trouble just because she wouldn't take off a jacket shaped like a cow? That must have been a strict teacher. :(



philosopherBoi
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14 Jan 2009, 3:55 pm

RockDrummer616 wrote:
This is very sad. This second grade girl got in trouble just because she wouldn't take off a jacket shaped like a cow? That must have been a strict teacher. :(


More like not fit to be around children, after all the teacher did assault the girl.... I know it says restrain in the article but the girl didn't do anything threatening she wasn't going to hurt herself or other so I believe that the teacher committed a crime against her for restraining her without cause.



HaliaTotheres
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14 Jan 2009, 4:11 pm

I thought teachers were being too careful about being able to help children as far as any physical contact at all, seeing as they can't even help button up overalls on a kindergartener anymore. Apparently they didn't care in this situation what the repercussions of their actions where. I'm furious and saddened at the same time that they believed an 8 year old child was going to violently injure them. Seperating her in the first place was wrong on a lot of levels. She did absolutely nothing wrong to be seperated, why couldn't she wear a hoodie? If I was a parent of a child at this school I would withdraw them immediately. Autistic or not autistic the teachers reacted in a completely negative and wrong way, and if this student was in with the mainstream students and considered "average" then the treatment they suffered by the teachers was still wrong. When I was 8 my brother beat me up all the time, my reactions were to bite and pinch. If an authority figure such as a school official ever layed a hand on me in a negative way, I'm sure I would have reacted precisely the same way. To talk to the child as if she were an adult by the police officers wasn't any better, telling her she's being arrested for battery, how does an 8 year old know what that is?



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14 Jan 2009, 4:20 pm

HaliaTotheres wrote:
telling her she's being arrested for battery, how does an 8 year old know what that is?


Do you get charged and put in a cell for battery? :wink:

(Sorry, inappropriate joke)


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14 Jan 2009, 4:21 pm

oh my gosh :P that was amazing ^



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14 Jan 2009, 4:29 pm

What kind of pathetic no-nuts moron needs to HANDCUFF an 8 year old girl? Are they really that dangerous? Are 8yr olds in Idaho ten feet tall with laser eyes or something?

Glad to see that the school system over there is improving.....


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gina-ghettoprincess
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14 Jan 2009, 4:30 pm

TallyMan wrote:
HaliaTotheres wrote:
telling her she's being arrested for battery, how does an 8 year old know what that is?


Do you get charged and put in a cell for battery? :wink:

(Sorry, inappropriate joke)


LOL, good one!


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14 Jan 2009, 5:03 pm

the only positive thing is that this time the parents know about it and something can be done now to prevent future problems, when i was locked in a kitchen at my playgroup all my parents did was take me to a different one and not take any other action. if the adults there could do that to one child what's to stop them doing it to another?


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14 Jan 2009, 5:17 pm

I hope they do sue them, and it goes to court, and the settlement includes training for every teacher and administrator in that district. The damage is already done to that little girl, but the parents can take steps to make sure it doesn't happen to the next one.

Sounds entirely too familiar to be comfortable. Sadly.



14 Jan 2009, 5:58 pm

But she did get in trouble for not taking off her cow costume.


What could the teachers done differently? Block the doorway. That's what my teachers did in 6th grade when I was put in a room. I tried to leave and one of them stood in front of it. That's all I can remember.



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14 Jan 2009, 6:28 pm

"What are batteries? What are batteries?"

I lold.


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