It is so sad, he had made so much progress and it’s all down the toilet now.
Do you believe/think maybe your son was at fault, in the back of your mind, somehow?
I agree here, though, watch the clip.
From Packer Man:
When I was 6, I wanted to elope, but Dad said I was too young to get married in any state in the USA. He agreed with me that she was a sweet girl, but no.
I’m sorry to say this, but the only way to make sure the aide never works with kids again is to press charges.
If you don’t pursue this, the aide may be fired from that school district, but there’s nothing to prevent the aide from getting another job in education. The new employer would run a background check, which won’t show anything.
If you want to ask the court to be lenient, that’s up to you. But you owe it to your kid to make sure it gets to court.
I’m the mother of a special needs child who is now an adult. If my kid had been assaulted on a school bus ride and I had been given the information that you were given, by a detective no less, we’d have had an attorney for the kid the following day looking into all kinds of things. I might have watched the video if the attorney told me specifically to watch the video. Otherwise, maybe not.
My advice is to consider getting professional legal advice asap.
Uh, why the heck is this decision even being left up to the parents?
I imagine they would proceed based on the video but would prefer to have our support.
I wanted you to know that my son is on the extroverted side too. People forget he’s autistic, so if they tell him to put a book down for example, he’s very literal so he’s drops it right where he is, and hilarity ensues. Well, it doesn’t really, because life isn’t the Big Bang Theory. I think in the long run, his extroversion will help your son. In the short term, it may cause problems because he won’t meet people’s expectations for being autistic. People suck sometimes.
I’m glad your friend is available as a resource for you. It sounds like you’ve got a great guide. 
As far as the incident shaking things up, regression is totally understandable. Have you been able to talk to your son about it? What does he say? My high level suggestion would be to talk to him. Tell him that what happened to him was wrong, and that you are working together with the police and the school to make sure it never happens again. Tell him that he deserves to be safe and you will protect him. Ask him what he thinks, and if he has any ideas he wants to share with you about the incident. You might develop a protocol, with the school. A plan for a safe adult or two at the school he can go to if he ever feels unsafe or something happens. If possible, get his input on who he trusts at school to fill that role. This way you start to give him back some control over his situation, and an idea about what to do when he is scared.
Also, please believe that with consistency and time, he will return to an even keel. He has regressed, but it will get better. Keep reassuring him and be as patient as you can. It will get better.
I was puzzled at first too, but elopement does have a broader definition than that:
With the exception of domestic violence in certain states, AIUI victims of violent crimes (or their legal guardians) have discretion regarding whether to press charges or not. I can’t think of someone else who should be handed this authority.
The school district of course does have discretion regarding whether to fire the aide who assaulted the OP’s son. Maybe I missed it somewhere in the thread but if this hasn’t happened yet, it sounds like it ought to.
Everyone has given the advice I’d give, so just consider this a post for emotional support :).
Oh, one additional point: I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned a counseling session or two for you and your wife, but that might be in line, and it’d be appropriate for the school system to be paying for it. It sounds like watching that video is likely to be traumatic for y’all; having a professional to help you unpack your feelings about it could be a good thing.
Just to clarify, is this aide a man or a woman? Everyone’s assuming a male, but I think I saw a reference to “she”.
I know it will be traumatic, but I’m glad you’ll be watching the video. Your wife, in particular, was sounding like she was siding with the aide like she felt somehow your kid brought it on himself even though he did nothing. If he’s picking up on any of that, what a terrible message to send.
[Devil advocates hat On]
I have not heard anything about audio. The parents themselves say the kid has a mouth on him. Get a rundown on the day. Do the parents go to school and just observe from a point so the kid does not know?
I have been taken to task because I did not instantly side with the authority. But: I never say or think, “My kid would NEVER do XX.” I am open to proof, I will not protect the challenged one to the point of him learning that he can get rid of people by pushing buttons until they explode. Now special ed folks need to know how to deal with it and need to know that the child can do or knows that it can happen.
Aide is female/male, what is their education level and experience level? Where they put in there with an incomplete back story on their charges.? Not qualified to deal with this particular problem. How many people do you know who were specially taught to recognize this type and what to think/do about behaviors from an in depth communication with these particular parents about this child?
If he tell another kid he is going to kill him and the aide does nothing & the kid does kill his classmate, do we hang the aide?
“Oh my child has NEVER even thought things like that.” = no clue parents IMO
So stand behind the kid but make sure your kid is acting 100% within the bounds of the knowledge base you and the experts have provided. The child is still an individual thinking human and can do stuff for the first time.
Sure would like a rundown on that day, everything from wake up and how it was said to when the abuse occurred.
100% behind the kid does not mean teach him there are no negative consequences to bad acts on his part. If he does not know in general right from wrong, he is not ready for classmates yet.
[Devil advocates Hat Off]
Tremendous lack of real information about this whole thing to just go on a video without intensive investigation to the lead up. Lack of audio and no detailing of the day does not make me think ‘just hang the aide,’ it has to be totally their fault because the boy is who he is…
Hope all goes well for the family, child now & into the future.
If the goal is to prevent this from ever happening again, the events that have already transpired will do more to assure that, than anything you can do in the future.
As for your son, get over it. He will take plenty of hard knocks as he grows up, and after. Just see to it that he is OK and help him understand that one is never out of harm’s way, but when things happen, you get on with it.
:eek:
Felony level assault is a deliberate attempt to cause ‘great bodily harm’. This isn’t a “just get over it” event.
You make me sad.
It won’t hurt to get a rundown of the day, but there is nothing whatsoever that the kid could have said that would justify assault. And the aide who committed assault also made this an incident nearly impossible to punish in an effective way for the child: whatever the child said, a punishment is going to come across to the child as siding with the assailant. That’s another thing to blame the aide for.
In the future, absolutely–find out what the kid said. In this incident? Fuck whatever the kid said, that’s not the focus.
My background: 2 special-needs kids here, though neither ever required any physical restraint - and of course I haven’t seen the video in question. My son, 23, is high-functioning autistic, my daughter, 20, has ADHD and anxiety issues. I also have an autistic nephew who has significant behavioral issues; he has assaulted staff on several occasions (he has also eloped more than once).
So, to be devil’s advocate, it’s possible the aide simply overreacted to a behavioral incident. Maybe he was attempting to make the child sit down, and lost control of himself, or whatever.
HOWEVER: nothing like that should have caused a bump to the head and physical bruises, and the police’s reaction to the video suggests that the aide’s actions were indeed out of line, at a very minimum. Short of your son going full on violent meltdown and causing a safety issue, I can’t imagine anything requiring the level of hands-on force that was apparently used.
Your son needs to know that he has you as advocates and that you will absolutely protect him from people who have the opportunity to harm him.
You need to know that this aide will no longer be put in any position where he can inflict harm on a person. Should jail happen? I don’t know. If it’s a single incident, probably not, but I don’t know this person’s background. Should he be banned from working with children again? Sure sounds like it.
Good luck - it’s a touch situation. The closest we ever were to this sort of thing was when another student (middle-school, I believe) hit my son. I got the definite impression from the school administration that they were encouraging us to press charges, as the kid had been a behavioral problem before. I think they either backed off or we misunderstood, in any case we did not press charges against the other student.
The child is 6. The trained adult professional put their hands on him aggressively enough to leave a bruise, cause his head to hit the window, and to derail months of hard fought behavior changes tha the child, himself, accomplished.
Somehow this is no big deal and the parents should just get over it. That’s absurd.
So you don’t really care about anything connected with this, as long as there is revenge and somebody gets severely punished. How many years of penal servitude at hard labor will make you happy?
In any case, a) lessons have been learned and recurrence of the event is unlikely, and b) the child WILL have to get over it. Whether anybody gets revenge remains to be seen.
Would any women posters that have been told variations of this throughout their lives like to chime in?
My autistic son was repeatedly bullied for years. We eventually had to get an attorney to get the school district to to provide a safe and appropriate schooling situation for him.
Do you want to know what he was told? Repeatedly? Ignore it. Sometimes you just have to live with it. Just get over it. It’s just kids being kids. It doesn’t matter.
Fuck that shit.
Someday the OP’s child will get past this. His behavior will stabilize. He will regain his trust in adults. It will take time. It won’t happen because someone tells him to just get over it because he HAS to.
Yes, watch the video. But get, and keep, a copy of that video. Protect it and keep it private — don’t tell anyone you have it. You don’t want your son in 10 years as a teen trying to find it because he knows it’s somewhere.
You might even consider not telling your wife you have it, so that doesn’t leak out.
You never know if you might need it in the future.
Good luck.