With no hope for recovery, death is the only way out

Ann Curry, on Dateline NBC, takes a film crew into Serbian institutions that look much the way institutions did in the U.S. a generation ago.

People with intellectual disabilities are shunned and warehoused, imprisoned without supervision under filthy conditions behind crumbling walls and rusted bars. They are given no treatment and meager care that may include being drugged or tied up day after day to control the anxiety and aggression that comes of being locked away. One man has been imprisoned in a crib for all of his 21 years. Among those shown are people with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other conditions.

Disability is a source of deep shame in Serbia, and parents are urged to put children with intellectual disabilities away in remote government institutions or risk financial ruin. Some surrender their children without ever glimpsing their faces.

Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of the institutions, acknowledged that the conditions are inhumane, but said the government does not have resources to fix the situation.

Said Laurie Ahern, associate director of Mental Disability Rights International:

The idea of being locked away and the idea that somehow these people, that their lives aren’t valuable, that they are less than human, because they were born with a disability. It’s horrendous.  And it’s awful. And it shouldn’t happen.

The video is here.

See earlier post here.

See also:

Reporter’s notebook, by Tim Sandler, NBC News producer

Shunned: Photos from inside Serbia’s mental institutions

From the [Willmar, Minnesota] West Central Tribune, AP/St. Paul Pioneer Press:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusing a Minnesota special education teacher of mistreating an elementary school student with disabilities through the use of excessive physical restraints and a locked timeout room. The court found that the actions were reasonable, and were not a substantial departure from accepted professional practice.

An earlier investigation by the Minnesota Department of Education found numerous violations of state and federal special education laws in the teacher’s treatment of the student and in her documentation of incidents in her classroom.

A lawyer for Jackie Nelson, the girl’s mother, said she plans to file an appeal.

Georgia eighth-grader had been repeatedly locked in seclusion room for up to seven hours at a time, according to court documents

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Jonathan King, who had ADHD, had told teachers at his alternative public school that he couldn’t stand being locked up. He threatened suicide several times before hanging himself in the seclusion room in 2004 with a cord a teacher provided him to hold up his pants.

A lawyer for the Alpine Program in Gainesville said there is no law addressing the use of seclusion rooms in schools, and that under Georgia law the school can’t be held accountable for Jonathan’s actions.

While there are data available on suicide in public schools, there are no specific data on suicides in seclusion rooms.

Officials for the Georgia Advocacy Office say Jonathan’s case points to this lack of data and oversight.
“This is not an isolated incident. In Georgia, we don’t have any particular rules about seclusion rooms and restraint,” said Ruby Moore, executive director of the Georgia Advocacy Office, one of 50 state offices providing advocacy for the disabled.

From the Chicago Daily Herald, Chicago Tribune:

A substitute teacher has been sentenced to probation, a $1,500 fine and 80 hours of community service for taping an 8-year-old student to his chair when he would not sit still and then putting masking tape over his mouth.

Matthew Konetski had been convicted of aggravated battery and unlawful restraint in the March 2006 incident. A first-year substitute with no special education training, Konetski was left alone with special education students without the two aides normally assigned to the class.

“I was just trying to come up with a way to deal with a situation I didn’t know how to deal with,” he said.

From the New York Times:

One unfortunate result of including children with disabilities in regular classes, experts say, is the increasing use of physical restraints on vulnerable students. Takedowns, isolation rooms, restraining chairs with straps and more are being used — the same sort of practices that families had hoped to avoid by steering clear of institutionalized settings.

In April, a 9-year-old Montreal boy with autism died of suffocation when a special education teacher wrapped him in a weighted blanket to calm him, according to the coroner’s report. Two Michigan public school students with autism have died while being held on the ground in so-called prone restraint.

… “Behavior problems in school are way up, and there’s good reason to believe that the use of these procedures is up, too,” said Reece L. Peterson, a professor of special education at the University of Nebraska.

… The issue is politically sensitive at a time when schools have done a lot to accommodate students with special needs, and some have questioned whether mainstreaming has gone too far.

Tim Miller, above, has been repeatedly been restrained at his middle school in New York. His parents are suing the school district. He has Asperger’s syndrome.

(New York Times photo)

From the Montreal Gazette, Toronto Star,

A Quebec coroner’s report into the case of 9-year-old Gabriel Poirer, who died in his classroom in the Montreal area, concluded that the boy had smothered when teachers tried to restrain him with a weighted blanket.

The boy was wrapped in a heavy blanket and left on his stomach, his head completely covered, for more than 20 minutes. The coroner’s report said teachers had received training in using weighted blankets, but had not followed the rules on the day the boy died.

The coroner recommended stiffer safety guidelines concerning the weighted blankets, which often contain ball bearings or buckwheat seeds.

(Montreal Gazette photo)

From the Orange County Register:

Robert Velasquez claims that a face-down restraint technique caused emotional and physical damage in his 8-year-old son. His formal complaint, seeking at least $25,000, alleges negligence, civil rights violations and false imprisonment. He said the teachers did not have proper training to use the technique, and that the boy’s nose was broken in the incident.

District officials declined to comment on the case, but said all special education teachers were adequately trained for their jobs.