A Melbourne mother wants a specialist school shut down after her vulnerable son was left battered and limping after an alleged assault, six years after a disabled boy died on the same campus in an unrelated incident.
Sharna Valli is suing the Education Department on behalf of her autistic child, who was allegedly attacked at Warringa Park Primary School, in Melbourne’s south-west, in December 2021.
Warringa Park School in Hoppers Crossing.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
According to court documents, a paediatrician said it was highly likely the injuries to the boy, who has autism spectrum disorder and severe language disorder, were inflicted on him at school.
“There needs to be a proper investigation and material changes to ensure the safety of children. Unless this happens, yes, it should be shut down,” Valli told The Age.
When her 12-year-old returned home from school on December 9 with bruises on his shoulder, under his arms, on his legs and back and a cut on his chin, his mother took him to the police station and reported the injuries, according to legal documents.
In the days after the incident, Valli noticed a bruise near his hairline, and saw he had a limp.
Valli said that after the incident, he was not the same child.
“He became extremely angry all the time. He was up all night with anxiety, became afraid to leave me and afraid of everyone else,” she said.
He struggled with going to the toilet and suffered from stomach pain.
“At times he would vomit due to stress,” she said.
He was now going to a different school but still showed signs of stress, Valli added.
She hoped the lawsuit would ensure better protection for children with special needs in school, and proper training for all staff to ensure other kids were not at risk.
Lawyers allege the department should have known the boy was at risk of being injured at the school because in 2020 he came back from school with a bite mark and bruises under his eye.
His mother withdrew him from Warringa Park Primary until a safety plan was put in place following that incident.
The now 15-year-old’s legal team argue it was reasonably foreseeable the boy would be injured in an attack at the school, and said the principal and secretary had a duty to ensure reasonable care of the boy was taken.
In their lawsuit it’s alleged the school failed to have a system for students to report misconduct or abuse, did not have proper supervision and didn’t direct students to report abuse to the principal.
They also claim there was inadequate staffing and supervision, failed to ensure there was adequate child to adult ratios and failed to ensure students understood appropriate and inappropriate conduct towards them or what to do if they felt unsafe.
Valli said her son now had post-traumatic stress disorder and his family want the department to pay for treatment with an experienced, trauma-informed psychologist.
They are also claiming damages, interest and costs.
“I don’t honestly know if [my son] will ever be completely OK,” Valli said.
But she hoped the lawsuit would show he had a voice and a right to justice.
“Not being able to communicate properly should not be any reason for him not to be able to achieve justice.”
Firm Arnold Thomas & Becker is representing the child, and lawyer Cameron Doig said the vulnerable young boy had been left with sustained psychological injuries.
“Proper supervision would have prevented those injuries and kept our client safe,” he said.
It is not the first time the school has come under fire, after seven-year-old boy Jovan Talwar suffered a fatal head injury when his wheelchair tipped off a ramp at the Hoppers Crossing school on November 26, 2018. He died four days later.
The department of education and training was fined $200,000, with a conviction, for safety breaches in lapses a judge said were “absolutely fraught with danger”.
Jovan and other children were outside a classroom and at the top of a ramp with a student teacher while the class teacher and a teacher’s aide were inside with a misbehaving child. Amid the confusion, a girl holding the wheelchair inadvertently let go and it rolled down at speed.
The end of the ramp was not flush with concrete underneath, and in its guilty plea, the department admitted it failed to maintain the ramp or have it assessed during the decade before the seven-year-old’s death.
It also failed to properly instruct and train staff over the supervision Jovan needed.
The department pleaded guilty to two charges of failing to ensure, as far as was reasonably practicable, that people other than employees were not exposed to risks to their health or safety.
An Education Department spokesman said it “investigates any incidents of alleged harm to students”.
“The department is unable to comment on this matter as it is the subject of a legal claim.”
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