Student Beaten By Another Child on School Bus

by Kristina Chew

Published April 25, 2009 @ 01:36PM PT

I've heard too many reports of children left on school buses----on April 17th, a seven-year-old boy on the autism spectrum was repeatedly beaten by another child on his school bus, today's News-Leader (Springfield, Missouri) reports. When the child got off the bus with "facial cuts and facial, neck and chest bruises," the bus driver and bus aide (who were both substitutes) told the boy's father, Roy Woolery, that "at the bus stop that they had turned their heads for a minute and when they turned back, they assumed he had pinched himself." But the bus's security videotape revealed that the 7-year-old was assaulted by another student;

[The boy's mother, Shannan] at the bus stop that they had turned their heads for a minute and when they turned back, they assumed he had pinched himself.

"She said (the bigger boy) would hold down my son with one hand and with the other hand would just beat him with a closed and open fist and was choking him. (The bus driver and aide) would notice it and step in, and that happened on and off continuously on that bus ride," Woolery said.

Neither adult separated the boys, Woolery said the investigator told her.

The 7-year-old has had nightmares and his behavior has regressed since the incident. He has been reassigned to another bus. His parents have requested to see the videotape but, as Shannan Woolery says, they "'would never be allowed to see it.'" She has made a formal request to do; further, an investigator from the Children's Division has told her that she is "trying to get the Greene County Juvenile Office," as the case involves "child-on-child" violence.

The title of the News-Leader story is Officials shrug off bus beating, says autistic boy's mom. Apparently, too, the bus driver and bus aide did not complete an incident report on April 17th, and the runaround the Woolerys are getting suggests that officials are more concerned about making sure they're got themselves covered. But what about the students on the school buses?

And here's a report about a teenager on the spectrum who, his family alleges, was beaten by police offices---see today's Chicago Tribune.