Eeyore's News and View

Children forced into cell-like school seclusion rooms
MURRAYVILLE, Georgia (CNN) -- A few weeks before 13-year-old Jonathan King killed himself, he told his parents that his teachers had put him in "time-out."
We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few minutes," Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child she called "our baby ... a good kid."
But time-out in the boy's north Georgia special education school was spent in something akin to a prison cell -- a concrete room latched from the outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper.
Called a seclusion room, it's where in November 2004, Jonathan hanged himself with a cord a teacher gave him to hold up his pants. Video Watch Jonathan's parents on their son's death »
An attorney representing the school has denied any wrongdoing.
Seclusion rooms, sometimes called time-out rooms, are used across the nation, generally for special needs children. Critics say that along with the death of Jonathan, many mentally disabled and autistic children have been injured or traumatized.
Few states have laws on using seclusion rooms, though 24 states have written guidelines, according to a 2007 study conducted by a Clemson University researcher.
Texas, which was included in that study, has stopped using seclusion and restraint. Georgia has just begun to draft guidelines, four years after Jonathan's death.
Based on conversations with officials in 22 states with written guidelines, seclusion is intended as a last resort when other attempts to calm a child have failed or when a student is hurting himself or others.
Michigan requires that a child held in seclusion have constant supervision from an instructor trained specifically in special education, and that confinement not exceed 15 minutes.
Connecticut education spokesman Tom Murphy said "time-out rooms" were used sparingly and were "usually small rooms with padding on the walls."
Only Vermont tracks how many children are kept in seclusion from year to year, though two other states, Minnesota and New Mexico, say they have been using the rooms less frequently in recent years.
Dr. Veronica Garcia, New Mexico's education secretary, said her state had found more sophisticated and better ways to solve behavior problems. Garcia, whose brother is autistic, said, "The idea of confining a child in a room repeatedly and as punishment, that's an ethics violation I would never tolerate."
But researchers say that the rooms, in some cases, are being misused and that children are suffering.
Public schools in the United States are now educating more than half a million more students with disabilities than they did a decade ago, according to the National Education Association.
"Teachers aren't trained to handle that," said Dr. Roger Pierangelo, executive director of the National Association of Special Education Teachers.
"When you have an out-of-control student threatening your class -- it's not right and it can be very damaging -- but seclusion is used as a 'quick fix' in many cases."
Former Rhode Island special education superintendent Leslie Ryan told CNN that she thought she was helping a disabled fifth-grader by keeping him in a "chill room" in the basement of a public elementary school that was later deemed a fire hazard.
"All I know is I tried to help this boy, and I had very few options," Ryan said. After the public learned of the room, she resigned from her post with the department but remains with the school.
School records do not indicate why Jonathan King was repeatedly confined to the concrete room or what, if any, positive outcome was expected.
His parents say they don't recognize the boy described in records as one who liked to kick and punch his classmates. They have launched a wrongful death lawsuit against the school -- the Alpine Program in Gainesville -- which has denied any wrongdoing. A Georgia judge is expected to rule soon on whether the case can be brought before a jury.
Jonathan's parents say the boy had been diagnosed since kindergarten with severe depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But his father remembers him as a boy who was happy when he sang in the church choir.
"He was a hugger, liked to go fishing with me and run after me saying, 'Daddy, when are we going to the lake?' " Don King said.
King said that he wanted to know if there were similar situations in other schools and that critics of seclusion rooms fear there could be.
"Jonathan's case is the worst of the worst, but it should be a warning. It's reasonable to think that it could happen in all the other schools that use seclusion on disabled children -- largely because the use of seclusion goes so unchecked," said Jane Hudson, an attorney with the National Disability Rights Network.
"This is one of those most unregulated, unresearched areas I've come across," said Joseph Ryan, a Clemson University special education researcher who has worked in schools for disabled kids and co-authored a study on the use of seclusion.
"You have very little oversight in schools of these rooms -- first because the general public doesn't really even know they exist," he said.
There is no national database tracking seclusion incidents in schools, though many have been described in media reports, lawsuits, disability advocacy groups' investigations and on blogs catering to parents who say their child had been held in seclusion.
Disability Rights California, a federally funded watchdog group, found that teachers dragged children into seclusion rooms they could not leave. In one case, they found a retarded 8-year-old had been locked alone in a seclusion room in a northeast California elementary school for at least 31 days in a year.
"What we found outrageous was that we went to the schools and asked to see the rooms and were denied," said Leslie Morrison, a psychiatric nurse and attorney who led the 2007 investigation that substantiated at least six cases of abuse involving seclusion in public schools.
"It took a lot of fighting to eventually get in to see where these children were held."
CNN asked every school official interviewed if a reporter could visit a seclusion room and was denied every time.
In other instances of alleged abuse:
• A Tennessee mother alleged in a federal suit against the Learn Center in Clinton that her 51-pound 9-year-old autistic son was bruised when school instructors used their body weight on his legs and torso to hold him down before putting him in a "quiet room" for four hours. Principal Gary Houck of the Learn Center, which serves disabled children, said lawyers have advised him not to discuss the case.

• Eight-year-old Isabel Loeffler, who has autism, was held down by her teachers and confined in a storage closet where she pulled out her hair and wet her pants at her Dallas County, Iowa, elementary school. Last year, a judge found that the school had violated the girl's rights. "What we're talking about is trauma," said her father, Doug Loeffler. "She spent hours in wet clothes, crying to be let out." Waukee school district attorney Matt Novak told CNN that the school has denied any wrongdoing.

• A mentally retarded 14-year-old in Killeen, Texas, died from his teachers pressing on his chest in an effort to restrain him in 2001. Texas passed a law to limit both restraint and seclusion in schools because the two methods are often used together.

Federal law requires that schools develop behavioral plans for students with disabilities. These plans are supposed to explicitly explain behavior problems and methods the teacher is allowed to use to stop it, including using music to calm a child or allowing a student to take a break from schoolwork.
A behavioral plan for Jonathan King, provided to CNN by the Kings' attorney, shows that Jonathan was confined in the seclusion room on 15 separate days for infractions ranging from cursing and threatening other students to physically striking classmates.
Howard "Sandy" Addis, the director of the Pioneer education agency which oversees Alpine, said that the room where Jonathan died is no longer in use. Citing the ongoing litigation, he declined to answer questions about the King case but defended the use of seclusion for "an emergency safety situation."
The Alpine Program's attorney, Phil Hartley, said Jonathan's actions leading up to his suicide did not suggest the boy was "serious" about killing himself. Jonathan's actions were an "effort to get attention," Hartley said.
"This is a program designed for students with severe emotional disabilities and problems," he said. "It is a program which frequently deals with students who use various methods of getting attention, avoiding work."
A substitute employee placed in charge of watching the room on the day Jonathan died said in an affidavit that he had no training in the use of seclusion, and didn't know Jonathan had threatened suicide weeks earlier.
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The Kings say they would have removed their son from the school if they knew he was being held in seclusion, or that he had expressed a desire to hurt himself.
"We would have home schooled him or taken him to another psychologist," said Don King. "If we would have known, our boy would have never been in that room. He would still be alive."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html

Gun-toting woman divides community
By Kathy Boccella
Inquirer Staff Writer
LEBANON, Pa. - Before heading out the door to go to Wal-Mart, Meleanie Hain fussed over her children, grabbed her coat and keys, then ran upstairs to get one more item: her loaded Glock 26, which she strapped to her hip.
She never leaves home without it.
Hain, 30, has caused a stir in this rural Pennsylvania Dutch community 25 miles east of Harrisburg for packing a gun everywhere she goes, including to her 5-year-old daughter's soccer games this fall.
She's paid a big price for sticking to her gun.
The mother of four, who often carries a baby on one hip and her Glock on the other, has been criticized by even the most ardent gun-lovers. From once-friendly neighbors to the local police chief, the general feeling is that Hain's pistol-packing behavior is, well, extreme.
"People get alarmed because they don't see that too often," said Charlie Jones, a soccer coach who confronted Hain about the gun at a Sept. 11 game. "They don't know what your intentions are going to be."
Hain said the outcry has hurt her babysitting business and left her feeling isolated. She has been called an attention-seeker, psycho, moron and worse on hundreds of pages on Internet forums. Neighbors have blasted her on radio shows, her daughter's principal warned her against taking the gun to school (she doesn't), and the local police chief advised her to put it away.
Now she is firing back. On Oct. 24, Hain filed a federal lawsuit against Lebanon County and Mike DeLeo, the sheriff who revoked her gun permit after jittery parents complained about her at the Sept. 11 game.
The suit says they violated her constitutional and civil rights and seeks more than $1 million.
"The sheriff got on TV after the hearing and said, 'I stand by my decision,' " said Hain, who grew up in Lancaster County in a family that did not own guns. "That comment makes people think I'm still an idiot and what he did was right."
DeLeo, who calls himself a staunch NRA member, said he has nothing against guns but felt it was his duty to take action "because of the safety and security issues involving [children] on the field."
Last week, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence offered to defend DeLeo and the county for free.
"This is a case that calls out for common sense and sanity," said Daniel Vice, the center's senior attorney. "It's an incredible risk to bring a loaded semi-automatic weapon to a children's soccer game."
No one disputes Hain's right to own a gun. Many of her critics are hunters. But they say that packing heat at a soccer game - or anywhere else around children - is dangerous and foolhardy.
In Pennsylvania, gun owners are allowed to carry weapons in the open as Hain does, but need a permit to conceal them in a pocket, purse or car. So without a permit, Hain could still carry a gun at the game but couldn't take it in the car to get there.
Even Judge Robert J. Eby, who restored her permit on Oct. 14, said he thought she lacked good judgment and common sense.
"You scared the devil out of some other people," Eby said.
He chided her for causing anxiety and apprehension in other people and said he didn't think anyone needed gun protection at a 5-year-old's soccer game. Concealing it "would be the right thing to do," he said.
Hain, who has children ages 1, 5 and 9 and a 9-year-old stepdaughter, says a near-fatal car accident 21/2 years ago destroyed her sense of security and convinced her that the worst can happen.
"I thought, 'What more can I do to ensure the safety of myself and my children?' " she said. "It's not a matter of being paranoid. People have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in their homes. They're not paranoid; they're prepared."
Articulate and well-versed in gun laws, she is a vegetarian and Krishna follower with a Sanskrit symbol tattooed on her forearm, though she calls herself a "pseudo-devotee." Her husband, who taught her to shoot, works in law enforcement but stays out of the fray, fearing it will cost him his job. She won't say where he works and in fact, he sat in his car while a reporter and photographer were in his house with Hain.
Her babysitting business has suffered. Two babysitting clients have fled and she is down to just one family. Michael Long - who leaves Tyler, 2, and Joshawa, 8, with Hain one day a week - said he doesn't worry because she locks up her gun when the children are in the house.
"I can see where she's coming from," he said, scooping up Tyler in Hain's living room, which was filled with toys. In a large crate in the kitchen was Ghost, an enormous bull mastiff.
Others, though, say they can't understand why she feels so threatened.
"I said, 'Kids are more in danger of falling off a piece of playground equipment or getting hit by a car in the parking lot than anybody coming and doing anything where you need a gun to defend yourself,' " Jones said.
But Hain sees danger lurking around every corner.
She carries the weapon cowboy-style because in an emergency - not that there has ever been one - "I don't really need anything extra in the way of the gun if I'm going to have to pull it out and I'm holding a baby and trying to shuttle two or three other kids," she said.
And she doesn't want to have to wait for help to arrive. "When seconds count," she said, "the police are minutes away."
DeLeo said he had rarely seen anyone other than a police officer walk around with a gun on the hip. In fact, doing so might make Hain more of a target, he said.
"If you carry it open, you already lost the element of surprise," he said.
Moreover, it increases the change of accidental shootings, Vice of the Brady Center said. And a child could easily grab it.
"Semiautomatic weapons are made so that even young children can fire them," he said.
At Wal-Mart, Hain zipped through the aisles like any other busy mother, except she had a Glock on her hip instead of a cell phone. The last time she was in the store, a woman complained about the gun to a manager who asked Hain to leave. She explained that she was legally entitled to carry the gun and marched back into the store.
On this trip, few people seemed to notice the gun as she filled her cart with Pokémon cards, jeans and diapers. Then in the milk aisle, a man and woman approached.
"Thank you for standing up for yourself," said John Stegall, who said he recognized her from the newspaper.
After they left, Hain, ever vigilant, said she had noticed them looking at her and wondered whether they were going to cause trouble.
"People who carry pay a lot of attention to what's going on around them," she said.
Hain has thought about becoming a cop, but friends told her that nobody would hire her because "she makes waves," she said.
But as she checked out, a young cashier asked whether she was a police officer.
"No, it's for self-defense," she said as she loaded her cart. "Do you know how many crimes have taken place in Wal-Mart parking lots?"
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_up ... ?viewAll=y

Israel: Iran could attack US with nuclear bomb
Israel has warned that Iran could try to attack the US if it acquired a nuclear weapon.
By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 8:19PM GMT 17 Dec 2008
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, appealed to world leaders to act now to prevent Iran from continuing its nuclear programme.
"If it built even a primitive nuclear weapon like the type that destroyed Hiroshima, Iran would not hesitate to load it on a ship, arm it with a detonator operated by GPS and sail it into a vital port on the east coast of North America," Mr Barak told a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Indicating the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran, Mr Barak said: "We are not taking any option off the table, and we recommend to the world not to take any option off the table, and we mean what we say."
His comments came as a Russian news agency reported that the Kremlin had confirmed that it will deliver a new air defence system to Iran. The Russian foreign ministry denied reports of the deal in October.
But it is now believed to be implementing the deal, which will see Russia deliver an S300 system to the Islamic republic to help it fend off possible air strikes on its nuclear sites by Israel or the US.
The most advanced version of the S-300 system can track targets and fire at aircraft 75 miles away. It is known in the West as the SA20.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -bomb.html

Crude plunges as economy struggles, spending falls
Oil continued its downward march Thursday as mass layoffs pushed the U.S. economy deeper into recession, signaling a drastic pullback on energy spending.
Light, sweet crude for January delivery, fell 9%, or $3.84, to settle at $36.22 a barrel after dropping as low as $35.98, levels last seen in June 2004. The January contract closes on Friday. Light, sweet crude for February delivery fell $2.94 to settle at $41.67.
There is no demand for oil right now, said analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover.
Higher prices for the February contract suggest that oil brokers and traders believe OPEC's unprecedented 2.2 million-barrel daily production cut, announced Wednesday, will tighten supply. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had already taken 2 million barrels of oil out of production, bringing total cuts to more than 4 million barrels per day.
"The market is saying OPEC cuts will have an impact but just not right away," he said.
Analyst and trader Stephen Schork said, "The only people still holding on to January contracts are those who made the assumption that $40 per barrel would hold. Those people are losing their shirts."
Schork said crude prices have further to fall.
Economic data continue to paint a dire situation in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications for jobless benefits fell to a seasonally adjusted 554,000 for the week ended Dec. 13, from an upwardly revised figure of 575,000 the previous week.
Still, the four-week moving average, which smooths out fluctuations, increased slightly to 543,750 claims, the highest since December 1982. The labor force has grown by about half since then.
Large layoffs are occurring across many sectors of the economy. On Wednesday alone, hard drive maker Western Digital, managed-care company Aetna and Newell Rubbermaid, maker of products including Rubbermaid storage containers and Sharpie pens, announced mass job cuts.
Pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb, International Paper and Bank of America also announced layoffs in the past week.
On Thursday, the Conference Board, a private research group, said its index of leading economic indicators fell 0.4% in November. The index is meant to forecast economic activity in the next three to six months. It has dropped 2.8% in the six months through November, the worst decline since 1991.
As companies and consumers spend less, analysts continue to whittle away energy demand expectations.
JPMorgan on Thursday cut its 2009 price target for oil to $43 a barrel from $69, citing "ongoing deterioration in the world economic environment and the ensuing sharp contraction in global oil demand in both 2008 and 2009."
Oil prices have tumbled 73% since July. What started as a crisis in the U.S. subprime mortgage sector last year has mushroomed into a recession in most developed countries and a sharp downturn in emerging nations.
Actions by OPEC and tumbling fuel prices have failed to stimulate demand.
"OPEC is virtually powerless right now," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Association. "They'll simply have to be patient and wait for some semblance of demand improvement."
Beutel said it could be several more months before there is a response to lower prices.
This week's dive in oil prices comes as the dollar weakens against the euro, which peaked at $1.4719 in overnight trading, its highest point since late September.
Typically, a weaker dollar sends investors scurrying into the oil markets because crude is bought and sold in U.S. currency. That is what happened as prices made their historic run at $150 over the summer.
The severe drop-off in demand, however has scuttled almost all of the rules that traditionally govern trade in oil, as the OPEC production cuts show.
Retail gasoline prices fell for 86 straight days, until Friday.
Retail gas prices, which hit a low of $1.656 a gallon on Friday, rose 0.3 cents to $1.67 a gallon Thursday, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. It is the third consecutive day of price increases, but is still down from $2.068 a month ago and $2.99 a year ago.
China on Thursday cut prices for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel as the government tries to revive economic growth.
The price of diesel is being cut 18% while the price of gasoline will fall by 13.8%, effective Friday, according to the country's planning agency, the Cabinet's National Development and Reform Commission. Jet fuel prices will fall by 32%.
The cuts will help trucking companies, airlines, factories and others that are being squeezed by high fuel prices and a slump in sales.
The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday said natural gas storage levels in the U.S. tumbled much more than expected last week and continue to remain below year-ago levels.
The Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report that natural gas inventories held in underground storage in the lower 48 states fell by 124 billion cubic feet to about 3.17 trillion cubic feet for the week ended Friday.
Analysts had expected a drop of between 107 billion to 112 billion cubic feet, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.
In other Nymex trading, gasoline futures fell 4.26 cents to 96.3 cents a gallon. Heating oil fell 6.96 cents to $1.3729 a gallon while natural gas for January delivery fell 7 cents to settle at $5.548 per 1,000 cubic feet.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-12-18-oil-thursday_N.htm

Good, wish they had asked mr to help
Iraqi judge: Shoe-tossing reporter was beaten December 19, 2008 - 7:38am
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD (AP) - The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference was beaten afterward and had bruises on his face and around his eyes, a judge said Friday.
Judge Dhia al-Kinani, the magistrate investigating the incident, said the court has opened an investigation into the alleged beating of journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi.
Al-Zeidi was wrestled to the ground after throwing his shoes during the news conference Sunday by Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and there has been conflicting claims on his condition since then. One of his brothers said he was harshly beaten, but another said he seemed to be in good condition.
Al-Zeidi "was beaten in the news conference and we will watch the tape and write an official letter asking for the names of those who assaulted him," the judge told The Associated Press. "Al-Zeidi has the right to drop this case."
The journalist was in custody and was expected to eventually face charges of insulting a foreign leader. A conviction could bring a sentence of two years in prison.
Al-Kinani also confirmed that the journalist had written a letter of apology to al-Maliki. Iraq's president can grant pardons that are requested by the prime minister, but the judge said such a pardon can be issued only after a conviction.
He added that he could not drop the case even though neither Bush nor al-Maliki had complained. "This case was filed because of an article in the law concerning the protection of the respect of sovereignity," he said.
A spokesman for al-Maliki said Thursday that the letter contained a specific pardon request. But al-Zeidi's brother Dhargham told The AP that he suspected the letter was a forgery.
The incident, a vivid demonstration of Iraqis' dismay over the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the country for more than five years, turned al-Zeidi into an instant folk hero. Thousands of Iraqis have demonstrated for his release.
The judge said the investigation would be completed and sent to the criminal court on Sunday, after which a court date would be set within seven to 10 days.
Al-Zeidi's action was broadcast repeatedly on television stations around the world. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack suggested that worldwide attention to the shoe-tossing was overblown.
"We would hope that the fact of a U.S. president standing next to a freely elected prime minister of Iraq who just happens to be Shia, who is governing in a multi-confessional, multiethnic democracy in the heart of the Middle East, is not overshadowed by one incident like this," McCormack told reporters in Washington.
McCormack said he believed that in the coming years "the fact of the president making that visit under those circumstances will probably overshadow any memory of this particular gentleman and what he did."
In the Iranian capital Tehran, hard-line Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati praised the act at Friday prayers, calling it the "Shoe Intifadha."
Jannati proposed people in Iraq and Iran should carry shoes in further anti-American demonstrations. "This should be a role model," said Jannati.
Also Friday, the head of a large West Bank family said it is willing to offer one of its eligible females as a bride for al-Zeidi. The leader, 75-year-old Ahmad Salim Judeh, said that the 500-member clan had raised $30,000 for al-Zeidi's legal defense.
http://wtop.com/?nid=500&sid=1550024