Teacher encouraged ‘fight club’ discipline against special needs boy, IN lawsuit says
An Indianapolis teacher is accused of encouraging bullying and abuse against a 7-year-old special needs student, all while telling the boy’s parents the child was making it up, according to a lawsuit recently filed in Indiana.
The classroom attacks happened over a three month span during the fall semester of 2023 at George Washington Carver Montessori, the lawsuit filed on April 16 said. The suit names Indianapolis Public Schools and the boy’s teacher as defendants, as well as numerous other members of faculty and staff.
During those three months, the lawsuit accuses the teacher of “orchestrating a reprehensible ‘fight club’ type of discipline within his classroom … in which he encouraged, instigated, and on at least one occasion recorded on his phone physical abuse.”
Sometimes, the teacher even took part, holding the boy down while other students punched and kicked him, according to the suit.
The teacher is no longer employed by the district, having resigned on Nov. 2 before he could be fired, “which the district was prepared to do,” Indianapolis Public Schools said in an email to McClatchy News.
The boy tried to tell his mother what was happening and once spoke to her on the phone while at school, but “he was hysterical” and difficult to understand, documents read.
“The mother instantly knew something was wrong but could not make out what was happening,” the suit said. “Unable to calm down her child enough to communicate with him, she immediately left her place of work and drove to the school.”
Neither teachers nor administrators would tell her what happened, but her son said he had been attacked by another student, his head “slammed” into a desk, then repeatedly struck after being yanked onto the ground, according to the lawsuit.
She brought this to the attention of the vice-principal, but no action was taken. Additionally, she was told her son couldn’t be trusted and that “it was her child who was disruptive, lying, and that this was a sign of a disordered personality in the child and related to his ADHD.”
His grades fell and he continuously begged to stay home from school. Then, at a parent-teacher conference on Nov. 1, the truth accidentally came to light, the suit said.
The teacher tried to show a video of the classroom environment to the boy’s parents, but “inadvertently began showing the wrong video,” and it showed their son being assaulted, according to the court documents.
One of the parents tried to grab the phone, but the teacher pulled it away, turning up the volume as they fought over it. The teacher’s voice could be heard loud and clear in the background of the video “instigating and encouraging the beating of their disabled seven-year-old child,” the suit said.
Watching while a student beats up the boy, the teacher is heard saying, “That’s right. You get him,” video obtained by WXIN shows.
The other student says, “I’m going to get him again,” and the teacher replies, “I know you want to get him when he does things.”
The mother reported the video to the school, and the state Department of Child Services launched an investigation, according to documents.
The district says it was not aware of any of the alleged abuse happening in the classroom, and the school’s principal became aware of the video on Oct. 31. Action was quickly taken, and “the teacher was immediately removed from the building and never returned to the classroom.”
Investigators discovered the boy’s teacher wasn’t the only person aware of the ongoing abuse. According to documents, the school district’s head of human resources told DCS in an interview that he was aware of the video and “had no empathy” for the boy being beaten as a means of discipline.
According to the lawsuit, investigators learned a vice-principal at the school also apparently knew what was happening in the boy’s classroom and at one point explained the situation to a substitute teacher, saying “(they’re) bad kids, that’s what you do!”
The boy’s family pulled him out of the district in November, and he is now being homeschooled, the suit says. Additionally, he now suffers from PTSD for which he attends weekly counseling.
His family is suing for damages “in the form of personal injury, pain and suffering and emotional distress,” the suit read.
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