WEST ORANGE, N.J. — A family in New Jersey says that people who worked at their son’s school abused him.
A surveillance film that PIX11 News got shows Zaire Smith, 11, being held down and put on the ground. The video which lasts more than 13 minutes shows that the child was held in the same place.
There is autism and ADHD in Zaire. Nica Smith, his mother, said that the school also tried to hide what happened.
“Seeing my son on the ground with his legs spread out was very hard.” If you zoomed in on his face, you could see that he was hurt because he was squinting his eyes and leaving his fingers out. “That’s how I felt,” Smith said.
Zaire’s family said that when he got upset, he was taken to a separate room at Mount Carmel Guild Academy in West Orange. The family says that a staff member’s actions made things worse instead of better for the child.
Zaire said he couldn’t breathe because someone was holding his hands behind his back and putting their face down.
In April, the event took place. PIX11 tried to get the school to react several times by email, but they never replied.
The website for Mount Carmel Guild Academy says that it has been teaching disabled children for more than 51 years.
Dr. Jeffrey Gardere, a psychologist, watched the video and said that things could have been done better.
“From what I can tell, this child may have felt completely put off by the people around him.” I think it was a shock to his system the way he was treated and put down that way. When a kid, any child, on or off the spectrum, is upset or angry, we need to remember that they are still a child. “That’s why we need to deal with any aggression, not with aggression,” Gardere said.
You can see Zaire throw a chair at one point in the film. It hits a wall and then a teacher. That’s how things seem to have gotten worse.
The child got a rug burn on his face and other cuts and scrapes, his mother said.
The family is going to sue, and they have a lawyer. They also met with people from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office last week.
Smith said, “I think they could have talked to him.” “They could have used words to calm down.” Someone didn’t have to hurt my son for things to get worse physically. “They didn’t need to do that.”
