“None of the Children at the School Are Safe”
One school. 21 abuse investigations. And the struggle to stop relying on seclusion and restraint.
This story is a collaboration between ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune.
The knock came on Beth Sandy’s door late one Friday afternoon at the end of May.
Standing outside was an investigator with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the state agency charged with examining allegations of child abuse and neglect.
Sandy assumed she was in trouble for violating truancy laws. A week earlier, she had pulled her 7-year-old son from Gages Lake School, which serves young children in suburban Lake County with behavioral and emotional disabilities, after he complained of a scary office and began hiding under the bed when the school bus arrived.
“Oh, great, here we go,” Sandy, who lives in north suburban Round Lake Heights, remembers thinking to herself.
But she wasn’t the target of the investigation; school employees were. An administrator at Gages Lake had reported concerns to DCFS that Sandy’s son Staley had been physically abused, the investigator explained. There was video. The investigator wanted to talk with the boy.
Since mid-May, DCFS has opened a total of 21 abuse investigations involving students at Gages Lake. Citing evidence from surveillance video, agency reports describe workers grabbing children by the wrists, shoving them into walls and throwing them to the ground in a cluster of four seclusion spaces — some with lockable doors, others open — that the school calls “the office.”
Two aides at the center of the investigations resigned from the school. One of them is facing criminal charges; Lake County prosecutors allege he used excessive force on students.
Despite recent efforts at Gages Lake to add employee training and more support for students, the school continues to struggle, with dozens of calls to police, staff CONTINUE READING: “None of the Children at the School Are Safe” — ProPublica