Autistic girl, 14, ‘restrained after throwing feces around classroom when school refused to let her use restroom’
AN AUTISTIC 14-year-old girl was allegedly restrained after throwing her feces in the classroom when a teacher refused to let her use the restroom.
The girl’s mother, Dawn Malvase, filed a lawsuit against the Poudre School District on behalf of her mostly non-verbal 14-year-old daughter, Jalilah Al-Haddad.
After the educator allegedly told Al-Haddad she needed to wait, the teen girl soiled her pants, according to the lawsuit.
Malvase filed the suit after the Fort Collins Police investigated and found no wrongdoing on the part of the .
Al-Haddad allegedly got upset after she soiled herself and started to throw feces around the room.
She was then dragged to a room where she was restrained, court docs say.
Malvase alleges her daughter was injured in the incident.
“I was enraged,” she added. “I was in shock. I didn't know what to do. You're caught in a place where you trust these people with your child and something like this happens.”
Malvase had her daughter examined by a physician, who notified Child Protective Services.
The mother described her daughter’s alleged wound: “It clearly looked like a rug burn … It actually looked like a wound the size of a hockey puck that was blistering."
When the police found no wrongdoing in the incident, Malvase and her lawyer, Igor Raykin, took action.
“State law says they are not allowed to restrain that child unless the child is posing a substantial risk to herself or others” the lawyer stated.
Malvase and her lawyer also allege the school never documented the use of restraint in the incident, according to KDVR.
That documentation is necessary under Colorado law.
The district said in a statement, “'Poudre School District takes the safety and wellbeing of all our students and staff seriously. The district does not comment on confidential student matters.”
“PSD determined that staff followed appropriate district policies and procedures. Generally, we can confirm that Fort Collins Police Services investigated this situation in 2020 and found no wrongdoing on behalf of the school district.”
Not happy with that result, Malvase decided to sue.
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“'It's like traumatizing a 2-year-old,” she said of her daughter. “You can't speak about what happened and how it affected them.”
The US Sun requested comment from the Poudre School District communications department but did not receive a response by publication.