Submitted by Julie McLaughlin, Jul 25, 2007 10:35

As a parent of a child with autism (as well as being a client of Andrew Cuddy) I would like to thank you for printing your article!!! The world needs to know how abused and neglected these children are by the education and court system that is set up to protect them and give them an education.

Let me give you an example that Mr. Cuddy can back up. My son has been denied a free and appropriate education pretty much since he was in Jowoino in Syracuse when he was 5. He is now 17. When he started kindergarden in the Mexico School district in Oswego county he was supposed to be mainstreamed with an educated- one on one aid. Instead, they stuck him in a class room of 25 kids and his one on one aid was on old lady who went to a two day long seminar on autism. He was not provided with any of his speech services that were listed in his IEP and instead of being in a class room, they locked him in a closet.

He was then sent to BOCES. His first few years there were alright because he had a wonderful teacher. However, when she passed away suddenly during his 4th grade year all hell broke loose. After that, they sprayed him in his face and eyes with lemon juice, restrained him all day in a rifton chair and again, locked him in a closet. They continuously suspended him for outbursts and REQUIRED (yes, required) him to be on medication to be in the classroom. The side effects of that medication made him sleep most of the time, gain more than a 100 pounds and made him extremely violent. After we pulled him out of such an abusive situation and took him off the medication, the supervisor of BOCES admitted to me ON TAPE that NONE of his teacher were in any way qualified to teach children with autism!!!

After that, Randy was forced into residential placement at Maryhaven school on Long Island because our school district could not come up with a way to educate him while at home even though he did not "need" a residential placement. While Maryhaven was a good school for him and he did well there, the school was more than an 8 1/2 hour drive away from us. Maryhaven also needed us to be there on a frequent, regular basis. The problem with that is that because the law only requires the school district to pay for 5 visits per year we had to pay for all those trips ourselves. (We are currently more than 25,000 dollars in debt for transportation, hotel and meal costs that the law says the district does not have to pay, even though those trips were necessary for Randy's schooling. So much for a "Free and Appropriate education"!)

Then United Cerebral Palsy opened the Tradewinds campus in Rome, New York where Randy had been accepted. We thought "Great! Its just an hour away" and soon moved him there. That was the BIGGEST mistake we ever made! I'll send you pictures of the physical abuse he suffered there! When we contacted on our doctors orders the Commission of Quality Care and Management, we were ignored. Their procedure for investigation was to contact to the school and ask what happened. That was it. They refused to speak to Randy's doctor who examined him nor did they ever look at the pictures. Nothing was ever done. Tradewinds too stated that he must be medicated while in their program. When the side effects of such medication became apparent (he became very violent) we insisted they take him off. I actually have it IN WRITING from them that because we refused to continue mood altering medication they were kicking him out of the school. (Yes, it is indeed illegal to require a child to be on mood altering medication to attend school.)

After Tradewinds, Randy attended Anderson School in Staatsburg, New York. He was only there for 5 months. Why? Because again, they required him to be on medication, even against Randy's doctor's advice. When, yet again, those terrible side effects showed up, we and Randy's doctor insisted he be taken off medication. We even did it in writing. So what did they do? They upped the dosage and continued the medication. We finally had to take him off it ourselves over the Christmas holidays under the supervision of Randy's doctor. When Randy returned to school in January, we received a call from Anderson's administration. They threatened that if we refused to allow them to put him back on medication, they would contact the Office of Mental Health and file court orders against us to allow medication, have him taken our of our custody and admit him to a psychiatric facility! We removed him immediately on the orders of our doctor, who felt Randy was in serious danger and on the legal advice of Andrew Cuddy.

So now where are we? Randy has received no services from our school district since January. We recently went to an impartial hearing and won. Our school district was required to immediately provide home services to Randy until a placement can be found. The school district has 45 days to find him such a placement. If they do not, we can place him at a school of our choice. As it is, Randy has been accepted since May at a very good school in Ohio. So why isn't he there? Because the school is not on the "New York State approved school list". According to our school district, any school he goes to must be approved. However, there is no law stating such a thing. This is just our school district's and New York's way of saving money, never mind what is good for the child. So Randy sits home, with no appropriate school in sight and only his parents providing his services. That decision by the impartial hearing officer was made more than two weeks ago and I have yet to hear from the school district.

We have now been told the school district is appealing this decision to Mr. Kelly. I'm sure you can see why we are scared. We know that no matter what we say or prove Mr. Kelly is going to rule against us and my son will still have no services and no school. Our son has been abused by the school enough. Now he is going to be ignored and neglected by the "court system" that is supposed to be helping him. When will this end? Apparently, it's a terrible thing to abuse and neglect an animal as evidenced by what is going on with Mr. Vick in the press but it's perfectly alright to do it to human children who can not speak for themselves.

Sincerely,
Julie McLaughlin

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