It is every parent’s worst nightmare that their child will experience abuse. This school district took it too far when they allowed a teacher to mistreat a special-needs child. The incidents of abuse are shocking.
Rosa Smith was a student at a special-education school in the Washtenaw Intermediate School District of Arbor Ann, Michigan. She is 27 years old with cerebral palsy and, according to the Washington Post, “wheel-chair bound, unable to talk and completely relies on others for the most basic functions. She is 4-foot-11 and weighs 62 pounds.”
As you can imagine, Rosa depended a lot on her teacher for help throughout the day. Her mother, Doreen, was heartbroken when she learned that her child wasn’t being given the care that she needed. The situation came to a head when Doreen received a text message from her daughter’s teacher.
“Help. She won’t be quiet!!!!!” wrote Nesa Johnson, Rosa’s teacher at the time, in a hurtful text to Doreen. The message was accompanied by an inappropriate picture of the with four pieces of tape covering her mouth. That’s when Doreen decided she’d had enough. In her lawsuit the mother described this action as “torturous” because of her daughter’s need to breathe through her mouth.
Doreen contacted an attorney and got to work. She drafted a lawsuit “against Nesa Johnson, who was the teacher at the time; the school’s then-principal, Anne Nakon; the school district; and two unnamed employees.” She had no shortage of complaints against the school for their negligent behavior.
It had all started years earlier when Rosa came home with a third-degree burn. Scalding hot coffee had been poured on her leg. When Doreen contacted the school about the incident, “officials told [her] that Rosa had caused the injuries to herself, although she could not have been able to knock over a container of liquid.”
Rosa was transferred to a new classroom with a new teacher, but that did not solve the problem. Three years later, Doreen “saw a deep gouge and a bloodied scab on [her daughter’s] forearm. School officials, again, said it was self-inflicted, although Rosa is not physically capable of injuring herself.”
Then, yet another incident took place. When Rosa went to school with a cold, she relied on her teacher to suction the phlegm from her nasal passages. Instead, Johnson locked the girl in the bathroom for hours. She justified her actions by insisting that Rosa had been “gurgling spit” – as if that is a reason to hold someone prisoner.
Clearly, there was something going on. The situation became even more suspicious when Johnson and Nakon left the school district. Although the district spokeswoman told the Detroit Free-Press that the women were not fired, “it’s unclear whether they left because of the abuse allegations.”
When Doreen heard that a school employee slapped her daughter, she had had enough. Rosa had been sitting outside, waiting for the school bus, when something unforgivable happened. A school bus driver who witnessed the incident told Doreen what had happened. She could not stand for it any longer; she had to rescue her daughter from that dreadful place.
Doreen pulled the girl out of school. According to Marko, their lawyer, “Rosa’s parents didn’t pull their daughter out of school sooner because they didn’t realize the extent of the abuse.”
Rosa is now too old for special-education services and programs, but she continues to grow under the guidance of her parents.
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