Posted on 08/17/2004 6:03:47 PM PDT by Born Conservative
PHILADELPHIA - A special education teacher in northeastern Pennsylvania was charged Tuesday with abusing autistic students too disabled to tell their parents why they were coming home from school with bruises.
Clarks Summit teacher Susan Wzorek subjected children to a pattern of abuse that began with small physical punishments, like stepping on their toes, and escalated to dragging students by the hair, bloodying their noses, and lashing them to chairs with duct tape, prosecutors said.
A number of teaching aides witnessed the assaults, but waited months to report them to Wzorek's supervisors or to administrators at the Clarks Summit Elementary School, where the classes took place, prosecutors said.
Wzorek, 54, was arraigned in Scranton on Tuesday on a felony charge of endangering the welfare of children. She was released pending trial, and could face jail time if convicted.
The charges involve Wzorek's actions toward seven students between 2001, the year she began teaching the class, and the summer of 2003, when she was transferred to a different school after an aide complained about her conduct.
Wzorek's attorney, James Walker, said she never intentionally harmed anyone. He called her "someone with great empathy for these needy children."
He added that he believed the Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit 19, which employed Wzorek and oversaw her conduct at the school, is not giving teachers the type of training, guidance or support they need to work with disabled students.
"If there was something improper in the instructional methods that were being used by her, someone should have said something to her sooner," Walker said. "There is a greater issue here, a systematic issue that needs to be addressed and corrected, but to prosecute one person for its failings is unacceptable."
Detectives began investigating after the parent of a 10-year-old boy reported in October that she believed her son had been the victim of physical abuse. During the time he was in Wzorek's class, the boy was treated for a broken arm and lost some hair, authorities said.
Teaching aides later told investigators that Wzorek had dragged the boy across the room, pulled his hair and used duct tape to restrain him using a chair designed to provide muscular support for children with physical disabilities.
The chairs are not meant to be used to discipline students, and none of Wzorek's students had a handicap that would have required their use, prosecutors said. Many of the children are nonverbal and use picture cards to communicate.
Lackawanna County prosecutor Gene Talerico said investigators were unable to uncover any previous complaints about Wzorek during her 30-year career. He said she may have been "overwhelmed" when she switched from teaching a class of children with less severe problems.
"It appears that in Pennsylvania, there are no minimum standards for teaching autistic children, and that is problematic," Talerico said. "If you are going to teach autistic children, you need to have the expertise to do it."
Fred Rosetti, executive director of the intermediate unit, disputed that the district was not doing enough to train or monitor special education teachers.
Wzorek's qualifications, he said, included decades of working with disabled students and state certification for working with mentally retarded children.
Rosetti said Wzorek was transferred to a class of high school students in August after an aide complained that she was being too aggressive with her students, who were as young as age 5. Some parents also reported seeing black and blue marks on their children.
Administrators investigated, but decided after speaking with a lawyer not to alert law enforcement officials, which is required by law when teachers suspect that a child is being abused.
"He felt that, in his opinion, that it did not border on child abuse," Rosetti said. He added that the information available to administrators then was incomplete.
As of this week, Wzorek has been suspended without pay pending the resolution of the case, Rosetti said.
Heads up!
"Thee beat da Thit out uf uth".
Clark's Summit is deliverance country not even worthy enough to be part of the white trash poconos, but a horrible little hamlet on the path from Scranton to Binghamton. This woman's teaching skills are right up there with family conflict resolution tactics in Clark's Summit's finest homes. Sans alchohol..........
I don't understand why they put the artistic kids in a separate class....
This is a sad story. Teachers of autistic or otherwise mentally handicapped/challenged kids have a very difficult job at the best of times. They probably don't have enough competent help, too. Somebody should have stepped in here months earlier. It sounds as if this teacher suffered from burn out. That said, what she did was not acceptable on any level.
bttt
I doubt they even do a background check, let alone check for
"expertise".
How sick is that? What a twisted person.
As the parent of a special needs child, I've seen autistic kids in his class who can be extremely difficult to deal with. There was one autistic boy whose parent refused to give the child medication, which made it very difficult for the female teacher and female aides to deal with. Another autistic child was being so difficult one day that the young female aide was reduced to tears.
AT one time, there were 4 autistic kids in my son's class, imo, a little too much for the teacher to deal with since their behaviour took too much time away from the other kids
I even put in a word for the teacher with the principal since I thought that was too much for one teacher to deal with.
I have great respect for special ed teachers, it's a very difficult job, one that requires a heck of a lot of patience. I can only imagine what it's like having to deal with just autistic kids, not that I condone what this teacher did. However, I do think that teachers also need the support of the parents (which I know they don't always get)and the support of those making the decisions for them.
So, the teachers are suppose dto be told to NOT hit, kick or ptherwise abuse their disabled students?
What a wicked thing to do.
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Welcome to the 21st century. |
Should I bang my head against the wall?
Actually, Clark's Summit ("the Abingtons") is a very yuppy area, although the surrounding areas could be described as Deliverance Country.
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My apologies for my cynicism. |
I just don't get how a country as magnificent as ours has been appropriated & taken over by dimwits is being allowed to turn our children into automatons. I, myself, do not have children, but my older sister (who is mostly responsible for my own political conversion) has 4 kids who have their own kids...and I worry.
Neither is necessary in obtaining a teaching position in Northeast PA. It's not what you know, it's who you, oh, never mind. Anyway, you need to know an administrator, or even more importantly, a school director, in order to get a job in many of the districts. I've also heard rumors of people having to grease some palms in order to get a job. If the teacher can remain in the job for 2 full school years and 1 day, he/she then has it made, as at this point, tenure is granted (short of committing a felony, this protects the teacher from ever being fired). And the people up here wonder why this area is not progressive...
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