Dad Records Teacher Bullying His Autistic Son

My name is Stuart Chaifetz, and my son, Akian, is a ten-year old boy who has Autism. Akian has always been a sweet and non-violent child, and that is why it was so distressing when notes started coming home from his school, Horace Mann Elementary in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, saying that he was having violent outbursts, including him hitting his teacher and aide.

I could not understand why this was happening. I had never witnessed Akian hit anyone, nor could I dream of him lashing out as had been described to me. In October, I had a meeting with the IEP team (the teacher, school social worker, occupational therapist and speech teacher) to try to figure out what was going on. From that meeting, a behaviorist was called in who wrote a report. I sat down with the behaviorist on February 8, 2012 to review the findings.

It was pointless; even though the behaviorist was in the classroom a number of times, not only had he never witnessed any violent event, but when he tried to create a scenario that would cause one to happen, he failed.

Something was terribly wrong. I felt I was beginning to lose my son -- that these outbursts were changing his very nature. The teacher and school social worker tried to downplay it, to the point of almost mocking me for my concern. But I knew my son. I knew this wasn't him. And I knew I had to find out what was happening in his class that was having such a dramatic impact on him.

On the morning of Friday, February 17, 2012, I wired my son and sent him to school. That night, when I listened to the audio my life forever changed, for I heard my son being bullied by his teacher and aide.



I don't even know what to say about this. :tears:

I'd like to see the record of the actual incident.

If anyone ever did this to my brother I don't know what I'd do.

Honestly though I hope he sends this to every parent, every teacher and every child in the school along with the names, telephone numbers and addresses of all those involved so that they can all tell them exactly what they think about it. If anyone is deserving of anonymous' wrath its these pieces of ♥♥♥♥.

That made me feel a little sick, honestly. I... don't think I can write what that made me feel. I wish I could contribute more, but... I think I need to step away for a bit and come back later when I'm not so thrown, hopefully. This is awful.

Some of my teachers do beat students, but they do it only to correct them if they do not behave well. That's acceptable, but for a teacher to Bully a child...
Sure that's really awful. I'd even say it's disgusting.

I honestly don't see much potential for discussion. I agree that something like this is despicable, and I have to say, this father was a lot more "lenient" with the teachers than I would have been. What worries me most is that some bits of what I've heard in the audio are things that I've heard my teachers say in pre-school.

My only criticism of the video is that I felt that it should have demonstrated rather than summarized the other allegations it made about what the tape contained. This man is generally alleging that the teachers colluded to fabricate information at a IEP conference. That is a very serious allegation that the teachers engaged in fraudulent and conspiratorial behavior, and as such I thought it was a bit insufficient to generally allege it had occurred and not produced the evidence.

Now, with that quibble out of the way, the behavior of individuals on the tape is thoroughly unprofessional, not to mention utterly contemptible. Like GWN, I would like more information of what transpired, and I can understand if there's some hesitation on the part of the schools in disciplining these individuals if the tape and then individuals speaking on said tape cannot be authenticated. However, the school's reaction is based on the fact they were tenured or some other factor, then I think that's an obvious abuse of process.

Teacher/Bully

Here's a site the guy made, there's supposed to be more audio but I can't get it to work on my PC. (edit: you need quicktime which for some reason I don't have)

I'm sure he sent the full audio to the school board and if no one is fired I hope he exposes them all.

*Sigh*

This situation is already getting out of hand. First, let me state once again that this is a horrific incident that needs to be dealt with in a more reasonable and responsible manner than that conducted by the school district, but it seems that the media is already sensationalizing the incident.

The Huffington Post has released the names of the of teachers in question, and has further alleged that these teachers were identified by Mr. Chaifetz. Their citation was an article published by the Collingwood Patch. However, upon further inspection, nowhere in that article does it state that Mr. Chaifetz alleges that those two individuals were the teachers that bullied his son. Instead, the Collingwood Patch is merely speculating through use of a Google cached page of Horace Mann Elementary School's faculty webpage. The article further states that the identities of the teacher's are unknown. Any yet, Huffington Post uses it as explicit support to state: "The Feb. 17 recording started with Akian's aide and the teacher, whom Chaifetz identifies as Jodi Sgouros and Kelly Altenburg, respectively, according to Collingswood Patch."

That's just not correct. This sort of feels like the Spike Lee/George Zimmerman fiasco all over again. I just really loathe sloppy reporting when it's really necessary in situations like this to be cautious and conservative.

I filed a complaint/correction with the Huffington Post. Let's see if they answer it.


UPDATE: Apparently, the relevant text has been changed to: "The Feb. 17 recording started with Akian's aide and the teacher, whom Collingswood Patch identifies as Jodi Sgouros and Kelly Altenburg, respectively."

This still misses the point. Collingswood didn't identify that they were the teachers responsible, they speculated that they could be. The post admits that it's "unknown" who exactly is responsible.

I hate modern journalism.

/ragequit.

I fail to see how this is serious discussion (prediction of the future of this thread: everyone bandwagons and says how horrible this was) and not another case of the media sensationalization. There are people who manage to become teachers who don't actually deserve to be teachers. Same with any other job.

UPDATE UPDATE: Now, nearly five hours after the story's been live and the names released and after a few more complaints, Huffington Post has changed the article yet again to say:

"The Feb. 17 recording started with Akian's aide and the teacher, whom Collingswood Patch provides evidence may be Jodi Sgouros and Kelly Altenburg, respectively, based on a previously published online staff directory."

Faith in journalism +0.5. Not sure if that should round up.

Moved to GCC.


...yeah, this is despicable. :/ And I'm appalled that only one teacher was fired - this kind of behaviour should never go undisciplined. Unfortunately, this also reminds me of a particular teacher I had in junior school who had a total lack of empathy and patience with the kids in her class - particularly children with disabilities. There was a girl in my class with Down Syndrome who had a habit of pinching other people. When kids complained, the teacher's advice was simply: "Pinch her back, just as hard as she pinched you."

I'm sorry, but I sure hope they both lose their job, and get humiliated in front of the public for what they did. Let them get a taste of what it feels like being insulted and humiliated.

This is absolutely wrong, and unarguably, disrespectful on so many levels.

You guys may find this shocking, but I for one am not 'cause I grew up facing these kind of teachers more or less. (Maybe not exactly as in this case ofc) That's what I got for living in a suburb I guess. Still, I think this is pretty damn pathetic and hopefully these teachers will get what's coming to them. And it will be SWEET.

If only someone could catch them red-handed and give them a fat slap on the spot.

However, I can understand that these kind of teachers may not be well-suited to dealing with Autistic children, but instead of doing something about it they just bully the kid.

As one who's experienced with autistic conditions, I can easily say the man was raising his son right and the teachers were pretty much doing everything in their power to prevent the boy's maturity, whether unintentionally or not. Of course I find it piteous and abominable how the Akian was treated, and if there was any way I could make the perpetrators see the enormity of their faults I would.

The father, Stuart, is absolutely right. People with Autism are supposed to be reassured in some way or else they have an emotional breakdown. It's a natural part of the condition, and in the words of Temple Grandin, it helps make them special, not different, and therefore certainly not acceptable targets.

Originally Posted by Radek

I fail to see how this is serious discussion (prediction of the future of this thread: everyone bandwagons and says how horrible this was) and not another case of the media sensationalization. There are people who manage to become teachers who don't actually deserve to be teachers. Same with any other job.

Man, you're good.

That video disgusts me. It truly does. I know that not every school in the nation is the same as Horace Mann, however, it is definitely not an outlier. There are many more. It's extremely ironic that this behavior was demonstrated in a school named after one of the most famous educational reformers in the history of the United States.

The audio clips shown demonstrate the school's teachers to be downright perverts. I agree with the man with grievances. Those people had no right to mention their homosexual intercourse while drunk the night before in front of young, autistic school kids. The most abhorrent part no doubt is that the staff lied numerous times denying such actions were ever done and instead blamed it on the student.