Disabled boy ‘left in own faeces’ by teacher aide

A Royal Commission has heard distressing evidence of how disabled children are treated in mainstream schools.

A teenage boy in a wheelchair was left traumatised after his treatment at school.

A disabled boy was left in his own faeces at school and given detention in his birthday, the royal commission into disability heard on Monday.

Witness Brittney Wilson, who lives with muscular dystrophy, told the hearing her brother James had run away from his unnamed high school in his wheelchair.

“James and I (were) experiencing family out of home care due to child protection services,” she told the hearing in Canberra.

“This was not a great time in our life, along with everything else we had dealt with in the Education Department.

“So one lunchtime with everything that had been going on he managed to sneak out of school grounds … in his electric wheelchair, that’s 200kg, managed to be lost for an hour before they knew he was gone and he had made it to the bridge and he was going to attempt suicide.

“He was 14 when this happened and I only heard about it because a friend noticed him on the bridge as she was driving past.

“Thankfully our father was able to talk him down. But tell me how a high school loses a child in a 200kg wheelchair.’’

Ms Wilson, 21, a board member of Children with Disability Tasmania, said her brother had suffered at the hands of some primary school teachers and aides.

She said one teacher gave him detention on his birthday for failing to finish his work, even though his safety harness prevented him reaching the desk.

“His friends took off his harness for him, lifted the table to try and get (the wheelchair) under the table to do his work and were trying to give him all of his pencils,’’ she said. “None of them got their work done, and the teacher gave them detention (too).’’

Ms Wilson said her mother took James out of his primary school for six months after a teacher aide injured him during a bathroom break, just days after a circumcision for medical reasons.

“To stop him from urinating on them and making a mess of the bathroom, they grabbed him by the tip of his private area and squeezed to stop him urinating, which obviously caused him immense pain,’’ she said.

Another time, she said, “our carer found scratch marks all up his bottom … from where they’d pulled up his pants after taking him to the toilet’’.

Ms Wilson said her brother no longer wanted to use the bathroom at school so would “hold on, which caused him urinary problems and bowel problems’’.

When he accidentally soiled himself, a teacher aide took him to the bathroom to clean him up.

“The (aide) pulled his pants down, took one look at him, pulled them back up and said, ‘I’m not dealing with that, I want to go watch the assembly’,’’ Ms Wilson told the hearing in Canberra. “James was left in his own faeces until he got home.’’

Ms Wilson said her brother was now studying business in year 11. “His dream is to open a cafe for disabled people to be employed within the cafe, and run it completely inclusive to all people,’’ she said.

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