Nonspeaking autistic students abused in PA special ed class; admins misled police
A teacher and an aide at a Pennsylvania elementary school abused autistic students who are nonspeaking, and Central Bucks administrators misled police and parents about the abuse, an independent investigation has found.
Lawyers with Disability Rights Pennsylvania – a nonprofit with federal authority to investigate public agencies on behalf of people with disabilities – substantiated a whistleblower complaint that was submitted to the local district in November. The nonprofit reported that students in a special education classroom at Jamison Elementary School "experienced abuse, neglect, illegal restraints, use of aversive techniques, and disability discrimination" under state and federal law.
Staff and administrators in Pennsylvania's third-largest school district also broke state law when they failed to report suspected child abuse immediately. When they did, the agency found administrators shared "incomplete and misleading" information with police, according to the report released on April 23.
Although the district's internal investigation had found evidence of abuse in the classroom, Central Bucks "erroneously informed parents of students in (the) Classroom and the local police conducting the ChildLine investigation that the District’s investigation found no evidence of abuse," investigators wrote. ChildLine is Pennsylvania’s child abuse hotline.
'Appropriate discipline' recommended for educators
Investigators from the nonprofit, who interviewed 20 people in the course of its three-month investigation and reviewed internal district emails and documents, student and personnel records, and multiple ChildLine reports, recommended that the two Jamison classroom staffers be placed on leave and disciplined by the district and "relevant governing bodies" for abusing and neglecting the students.
Investigators also recommended that administrators "involved in these issues" be "subjected to appropriate discipline."
The report noted that discipline should come from the school board, as Superintendent Steve Yanni was "directly involved in these issues."
The accused teacher declined to be interviewed by a lawyer for the nonprofit. She has denied wrongdoing to the Bucks County Courier Times, part of the Paste BN Network, through a public relations professional.
Investigators also advised Central Bucks to require its employees to undergo child abuse training before they start work, rather than allowing them six months to do so, which is the district's current practice.
The Bucks County Courier Times contacted the Central Bucks administration, school board members, Warwick police and others named in this story for comment.
The Central Bucks school board and assistant superintendent, Charles Malone, released a statement April 23 saying it had received the nonprofit’s report that afternoon and would review it “with utmost seriousness.”
“It is important that we take the appropriate time to carefully evaluate the information presented before commenting or acting on any details,” the statement said.
Probe finds abuse, neglect, discrimination against students
Disability Rights Pennsylvania's findings and an earlier state investigation found that students were illegally restrained.
Although the state report didn't evaluate whether the restraints constituted child abuse, the federal monitor found that the teacher and aide abused children by restraining them.
Additionally, the staffers abused one student by encouraging him to self-stimulate inappropriately while undressed on the bathroom floor, denying him water and verbally harassing him, investigators found.
All students in the classroom were abused, the report stated, because they either observed or experienced abuse, neglect, inappropriate punishment and demeaning treatment "on a daily basis." The primarily nonspeaking children also faced neglect because the teacher and the aide prevented the students from being evaluated by the school nurse for potential injuries.
The "discriminatory views" that staffers and administrators held about autistic children played a role in the district's mishandling of the abuse allegations, investigators found, including the failure of multiple staffers to report abuse concerns to ChildLine.
"The most telling statement came from Dr. Yanni," the superintendent, investigators wrote, "who said that 'if these events had occurred in a second-grade classroom, then yes, the teachers would have been removed.'"
Although Yanni told investigators that the district would've placed the staffers on leave if there had been a criminal investigation, this never happened, even during the criminal investigation by Warwick police, according to the report.
Instead, the nonprofit report and an attorney for Central Bucks confirmed that the two staffers went on medical leave (which is typically initiated by the employees themselves) last winter.
Administrators withheld info from police: investigators
Disability Rights Pennsylvania found that Central Bucks never provided "any of the documentation with the full allegations" to Warwick police.
Yanni repeatedly failed to share relevant information with police and the child abuse hotline, investigators found, and didn't provide notes from staff interviews or the whistleblower report. Yanni only reported allegations about one student.
The law calls for all allegations to be reported to ChildLine, and not vetted by school administrators first.
Jim Pepper, a school board member and parent of one of the children abused in the Jamsion classroom, said in December that when he shared the whistleblower complaint with Warwick police Detective Sergeant Aaron Richwine, who was investigating the claims, Richwine told him it was the first time he'd seen the full complaint.
Yanni and Mike Petitti, a Central Bucks spokesperson, disputed this claim, stating to the Paste BN Network in January that they had shared everything with police.
But there is "no evidence" that Yanni ever provided the whistleblower complaint or the district's full investigative report to police, nonprofit investigators found. District administrators instead provided a "fact-finding summary,” which the police considered sufficient for closing the case. The fact-finding team was led by the head of human resources, Rob Freiling.
"Thus, it was just a self-fulfilling circle: Dr. Yanni provided limited information in the ChildLine report and to the police; Dr. Yanni told the police that the District’s investigation found no abuse; the police relied on that conclusion in closing the file; and Freiling disowned any responsibility for the District to investigate abuse as it was the police’s role," investigators wrote.
The district's fact-finding team did not include any special education staff, according to the report.
Local police have refused to provide their investigative file to Disability Rights Pennsylvania despite the nonprofit's federal access authority, according to the report. The nonprofit is "considering next steps" to obtain the file.
There is no evidence that Bucks County Children and Youth investigated the Jamison allegations. It’s still unclear why ChildLine classified Yanni's first report as “law enforcement only,” the nonprofit wrote.
Though the district's internal investigation in November had substantiated several abuse and neglect allegations, including "nudity and self-stimulation, water restriction," and "use of restraints," according to the nonprofit's report, Yanni and Freiling told police and Pepper in December that there was no evidence of abuse.
Yanni also lied to Pepper when he told him that the finding of water restriction was related to spending too much time at water fountains, according to the federal monitor's report, and that despite Pepper's concern about marks on his son's body, the district's investigation found "absolutely no report of physicality like you mentioned."
Yanni told the Bucks County Courier Times he only reported that the aide had pushed or grabbed a student and had spoken inappropriately to him because those were the allegations the district couldn't "clear" in its investigation.
But Yanni told investigators from Disability Rights Pennsylvania that it was because the whistleblower had only mentioned those two allegations on Nov. 20. In fact, the whistleblower had submitted her full written complaint to Freiling, from HR, on Nov. 18.
The district failed its obligation to report child abuse concerns in a timely manner after learning of the allegations in November, the report found.
Yanni made a ChildLine report only after the whistleblower emailed to ask if she should, investigators found.
Yanni informed school board members about the allegations in January, and school officials became concerned that he hadn't reported enough information about the allegations to authorities, so Yanni made another ChildLine report Jan. 11 while school board members watched over Zoom, investigators wrote.
Yanni ran out of space to include the whistleblower complaint in his report, and again reported only some allegations involving one student, Pepper's son.
Disability Rights Pennsylvania noted its concern over the limitations to ChildLine’s written reporting features and the fact that Yanni couldn’t get through on the phone for at least 40 minutes when he made his first report.
Culture of retaliation in Central Bucks: Report
Disability Rights Pennsylvania can evaluate personnel issues, such as retaliation, only to the extent that they contribute to potential abuse or discrimination under the nonprofit's federal authority. A "culture of fear and retaliation" at Jamison and among the Central Bucks administration allowed the abuse in the Jamison classroom to persist, investigators found.
The school board did not place the superintendent on leave when concerns that the district had mishandled the investigation first came to light, and the superintendent, in turn, did not place any of the subordinates involved in the investigation on leave. Since then, multiple staffers expressed concern that administrators could retaliate against them while they remained in their positions, according to the report.
Staff and administrators who work at Jamison were concerned that the principal, Dave Heineman, would retaliate against them for reporting concerns about the classroom teacher in part because they believed he had an inappropriate relationship with her, according to the report.
Around Nov. 17, Heineman called Alyssa Wright, the head of pupil services and special education, to ask if he could fire the whistleblower for questioning the teacher, according to the report.
Although Heineman maintained in an interview with Disability Rights Pennsylvania that he was unaware of problems with students in the classroom, the nonprofit later found this was untrue, according to the report.
Still, Heineman had urged district leadership not to put the teacher on leave during a November meeting with administrators, according to a letter Katie Veisz sent to Yanni in March.
Yanni had acknowledged a "culture at Jamison of favoritism" related to Heineman during an interview with this news organization in January.
Heineman was put on paid leave last month, approximately a week after the district received Veisz's letter.
There is no evidence that any other administrators have been placed on leave related to the Jamison allegations, although the assistant superintendent, Nadine Garvin, is retiring early.
Earlier in March, Wright, the head of special education, wrote to Yanni that the district was "concealing abuse and neglect," according to the nonprofit report. Wright also wrote that she believed the district was preparing to fire her.
Wright had been left out of the district's investigation at Jamison, she told investigators.
School board members are also awaiting the results of a third-party investigation into the Jamison allegations that they approved earlier this year.
Jess Rohan can be reached at jrohan@gannett.com.