Autistic Child Being Abused by Teacher

While exploring youtube I happened to check the small section that youtube devotes to upcoming or favorite videos. What I found today left me horrified and angry; this is what I found:

In this short 19 second clip we see a teacher, Laurie Davis, apparently from Pittsburgh public school physically slap and raise her voice to an 11 year old autistic child who is unable to speak. As startling as this might seem, this is not the first time she has been reported as abusing students. Luckily this time, a teachers aide was able to take out his or her cell phone and catch the incident in its entirety. Needless to say the parents were horrified and are suing the district for damages.

Watching this video makes chills run up and down my back; how any human can be so cruel to another human is beyond me. As I watch this video a second time I think to myself how dare she raise her hand to strike the child. I have had only a small sampling of experience working with those who have debilitating conditions, and believe me it is truly heart-breaking. My heart goes out to those legitimate caretakers who love and nurture these individuals instead of promptly and roughly abusing them. We are talking not only of a child here, but of an autistic child, making this act especially heinous. How emotionally taxing must it be for the eleven year old, to have this vile woman attack her for an unknown reason. A part of me wishes that the teacher in this incident would develop a debilitating disorder and remain as a vegetable depending on the care of another human who abuses her, but then again I wouldn’t even wish that upon anyone. Not even she deserves treatment like that.

Now get this, although the teacher was removed from the classroom soon after this video went viral somewhere in March, she was not fired. It took the school up till August to finally remove her from the classroom. Are schools that criminally negligent? How can a school hire a person like this? I wonder how long she was working for that school before she was ultimately let go. I wonder how many children she smacked during her stay at this school. Where is the stringent background checks? Where are the random teacher assessments? Why did it have to come down to a cell phone video to finally get her out of that position? It wasn’t like the school was unaware of this problem either, it was brought to their attention that the teacher was rough with the students. Only after damning evidence surface did they decided to take action attempting to save face. Personally I find that morally and inexplicably wrong. It’s hard to articulate into words how thoroughly repulsed I am. We can only wonder how many more students she would have hurt if this teacher’s aide hadn’t taken this video.

I honestly don’t know very much about this situation and all the information that I have gathered comes from this user’s account. However, until we have more stringent requirements on the behavior of teachers in the classroom especially relating to those who are in need of special treatment and ways to verify that behavior, occurrences like this will continue. Please, Please discuss.