2 Teachers Accused Of Abusing Autistic Students
Two Texas teachers working in the same classroom have been charged with abusing multiple autistic children.
Just like in any sector or industry throughout the nation, bad apples can ruin a reputation. Unfortunately, education is rife with issues, and many of them center around abuse. It’s a growing concern for many Americans, as not one, but two Texas teachers were recently charged for allegedly abusing multiple autistic students at a school – furthermore, in the same classroom.
Click2Houston reported the Texas teacher’s incident after obtaining court documents. The events took place inside Aldine ISD, a public school in Harris County, Texas. According to the court documents, the investigation says that a former ISD teacher and another paraprofessional teacher’s aide were accused of abusing two children with autism.
The investigation into the events surrounding the Texas teachers began after one of the student’s parents notified the principal at Raymond Academy about something suspicious that had recently happened at school. The principal promised to look into the matter and surveyed the student’s classroom surveillance cameras. The report states that the principal immediately contacted authorities following something disturbing caught on camera.
While it has not been made clear yet, the reports suggest that the surveillance footage showed a special education teacher’s aide, 22-year-old Maria Guadalupe Gonzalez-Valencia, assaulting a 6-year-old. The autistic child was non-verbal, and the Texas teacher is accused of striking them with an unknown object. The teacher was charged with one count of felony injury to a child under the age of 15. Furthermore, Gonzalez-Valencia is currently being held on a $30,000 bail.
The second incident at the same school involved another Texas teacher, Britnee Vaughn. The 35-year-old taught a special education class alongside the accused teacher’s aide. Vaughn was charged with two counts of felony injury for assaulting two special needs children. According to the reports, the teacher kicked and grabbed the same 6-year-old student Gonzalez-Valencia is charged with abusing. Likewise, she allegedly was caught pulling another 9-year-old student by the ear. She is being held with a bond set at $100,000.
One incident of abuse inside classrooms is one too many, but multiple acts involving two Texas teachers in the same classroom are outright appalling. Brittany DeJohn, a mother of four children who have attended Austin ISD spoke to the local news station about her disgust after learning the news. Her son was a former student of the two teachers. According to her allegations, it seems the educators might have harmed other students as well.
“When I tell you my heart fell to my stomach because right then I started thinking of all these things that didn’t make sense to me the entire time,” said DeJohn. The mother had previously pulled her at the time 7-year-old son out of the school after only five months in attendance in the Texas teacher’s classroom. She stated that her non-verbal autistic son often came home after school flinching, and sometimes had bruises and cuts.
The accused Texas teacher told the concerned mother that her son hit his face on the corner of a table after he came home with a black eye one day. After an entire week, school officials handed DeJohn an incident report, which documented the “accident” as entirely different than the story his teacher had given her. DeJohn told reporters that she is soon meeting with school officials to review video footage of the incident.
DeJohn’s concerns are further alarming, as it hints at possible abetment by school officials. The fact that the Texas teacher, who is already being charged in another abuse case, told one story, and school officials said something different is alarming to many. The troubled mother also said that she had to take her son to the hospital for stitches after one of the happenings.
As lawmakers push for more parental rights in the war on public schools, cases like this do nothing to support Democratic efforts saying the system is perfectly fine. The two Texas teachers might not yet be guilty of the abuse cases, but all signs point toward it happening. It’s a scary situation for parents already low on educator trust.
