You're Under Arrest

by Kristina Chew · 2009-07-17 14:41:00 UTC
Topics:

handcuffs by And-rey
Autistic girl arrested; family wants damages is the head line in yesterday's MSNBC. Back in January, 8-year-old Evelyn Towry was arrested at Kootenai Elementary School after staff said that she "spit on and inappropriately touched two instructors." She was handcuffed---

Wait a moment. She is an 8-year-old girl.

And there's more: Evelyn, who has Asperger's Syndrome, was taken to the county juvenile lockup and released to her parents. The charges against her were dropped by a county prosecutor. Now her parents, Charles and Spring Towry, wants the school district and county to pay more than $500,000 in damages.

Scandalous and out of proportion, and yet that headline describes something that many of us, parents and self-advocates feel. Individuals and students with disabilities may not actually be, as Evelyn wrongly was, arrested (though it has happened to at least one other student on the spectrum). But they are daily subjected to discrimination and daily have their rights and dignity trampled upon in a multitude of ways (like the financial abuse that Dora wrote about recently).

No wonder restitution or its equivalent, and justice, must and is being sought.

Kristina Chew
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