When a Washington state mother met her child at the neighborhood bus stop after school, she was horrified to see that he wasn’t wearing any pants and was sobbing as he got off the ride. She immediately ran to her traumatized child, demanding to know what happened, when she saw what was hanging down between his legs.
The parent, who asked to not be identified, called the boy’s school, Mint Valley Elementary in Longview, irate and looking for answers, since she couldn’t figure out through the boy’s tears exactly what happened.
The mother was met with a sick excuse from administrators, who were shrouded in some secrecy about the deplorable treatment this small child received.
According to KOIN, this public school is no stranger to controversy, having come under fire in the past for isolating special needs kids in boxes. Now, this boy’s foster parent wants to know why his clothing was removed and why he was forced to wear a sagging, soiled diaper, along with nothing but a t-shirt. Well over the age for needing to wear Pampers, her son was sent back to class like this, after seemingly being punished for having a classroom accident, where he wet himself.
Instead of dressing the boy in clothing from either lost and found, or any type of clothing they could find, they put an over-sized diaper on him that hung down to his knees. He was then sent back out to be embarrassed in front of all of his peers in school and on the bus. To make matters worse, he already feels he’s at a social disadvantage, having a slight learning disability and being shuffled into a new school with his latest foster family. Obviously he was devastated by this.
The administrators were questioned couldn’t answer why he wasn’t given replacement pants. The district spokesperson Sandy Catt admitted that the school didn’t follow protocol. Teachers also partly blamed the child for not having an extra set of clothing on hand, even though the school didn’t make any attempt to call the parent to bring some.
“Typical protocol would be that the child would be cleaned up and outfitted with some sort of unisex loaner sweats or something like that,” Catt told KOIN 6 News. “That protocol was not followed, and from a district level we have investigated that.”
This admission didn’t make the foster mom feel any better. She is sad for this little boy, who has already endured enough in his young life, and this incident was disgustingly unnecessary. While the school says that they’re still trying to figure out what happened, the semantics don’t really matter, since the damage is already done.
This public humiliation teh boy experienced could scar him for life. It’s common in any school that if a child has an accident of any kind to call the parents and ask for new clothes or for them to pick up the child. The child should be ket away from the other children until the situation is handled to avoid any added emotional stress on the child. The person who thought this was okay better pay.
