Culture News Blog

Anna Werner SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ― It sounds like cruel and unusual punishment: locking a school kid away for hours all alone, or taking them down to the ground and pinning them there, just for misbehaving in class. Investigative reporter Anna Werner first exposed the practices here in California. Now we're learning it's a growing problem nationwide.

"I am a boy whose life is a wreck," writes 5th grader Nick Valles in a letter to his school principal. "I feel like my teacher hates me."

Nick is yet another child who says his school left him in seclusion, day after day in the small room behind this door in his classroom. "I was completely alone. I just felt like really weird and angry and sad."

Why? His mother says that was the method chosen by the teacher at St. Cyprian School in Sunnyvale for handling Nick's ADHD.

"He had panic attacks, he couldn't sleep. He had night terrors where he would wake up screaming in the night," said his mother Carmen Valles.

But his mother says for months, it was kept a secret from her. "I am a very involved parent and I didn't know. I was just so disappointed and so upset that they would humiliate and treat such a nice child in this way."

She contacted CBS5 Investigates after we reported on problems with seclusion and physical restraint of children in schools. Children kept in closets like this one in a school in Livermore. Or restrained with duct-tape like this child in Southern California.

And it turns out it's not just California: Since that first story, parents across the country have contacted us to say it's been happening to their children too. A mother from Florida describes her son as being "locked in closets and prone restrained almost daily" at his school. And in Georgia, another mom says there," they scare (the kids) into not telling."

"I think it's a national issue," said Maggie Roberts, an attorney with Protection and Advocacy , an Oakland non-profit for the disabled.  "There are a few states that have made a big effort to move from a culture of restraining and secluding kids. But a lot of states including California just aren't there yet."

And how big of a problem is it? There are no firm statistics. But Denise Marshall with the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates  said "There are hundreds of incidents. The most sensational make the news, but that is the tip of the iceberg."

But Carroll Schroaeder with The California Alliance of Child and Family Services said "We need to have both of those options." The group represents non-profit providers and is opposed to a California bill that would immediately end the practices. "You make it go away by good practices, reducing, reducing, reducing until one day its eliminated."

He believes that will take years. But advocates like Maggie Roberts disagree. "I don't agree, I think that you can."

Families meanwhile say change can't come too soon. "It's going to be hard to like, get it out of my mind," said Nick Valles. And his mother said "I believe they do need to have national legislation. I don't want this to happen to one more child."

St. Cyprian's school principal turned down a request for an on-camera interview. His only comment: no comment.

So how do you deal with kids that have behavior disabilities without restraining or locking them up? Anna interviewed an expert on that. Watch her Q&A on our web extra.

This is cache, read story here