Two parents are distraught after their safety concerns for special needs children were dismissed following an alleged assault on their 6-year-old nonverbal autistic son last week.
Hamilton father Erwin and his wife, who asked the Herald not to publish their surname, were speechless when their son was dropped off at home by a specialised school transport assistance (Sesta) school bus with a bloodied, scratched and bruised face from an attack by another student.
Their boy, a student of Patricia Avenue School, has a subset of autism which makes him unable to speak. He has a “core board” with pictures he can point to instead, and his parents said he pointed to “no” and “bus”, raising questions about the trauma he experienced onboard.
The parents understood a 17-year-old student had left their son unable to open his eyes after the attack. They filed a police report about the incident and police confirmed they are making inquiries.
“As a parent, I blame myself that I wasn’t there to protect my son. I just can’t imagine how afraid my son was and how he tried to defend himself from the attack” his father said.
“No child should have to go through an assault like what my son went through. I hate to imagine what my son went through. Every punch, every scratch he had to endure.”
An incident report shown to the Herald said the 17-year-old was “out of control” while his mother and the driver tried to stop him from launching his attack. He had been “reaching over and touching” the other boy throughout the journey to his house which the driver had “tried to stop him from doing”.
The Ministry of Education’s group manager for school transport, James Meffan, said the alleged attacker had since been stood down from the Sesta service while the incident was investigated.
“We are very sorry to hear a student has been allegedly assaulted on one of our Sesta services. We take the safety of our students on our school transport services very seriously and are currently conducting a full investigation into this alleged assault,” Meffan said.
Students had to be “assessed” before they can use the transport, Meffan said, and if they displayed any behaviour that posed a risk to others a safety plan “must be put in place”.
“In this case, the alleged attacker had been travelling on our Sesta service for more than three years without any previous incidents,” he said.
Erwin wanted the school, the bus operator, and the Ministry of Education to step up their safety protocols to protect other children from experiencing similar incidents. He wanted a teacher aid or supervisor to be onboard to look after the more than 12 children who regularly used the bus.
But Erwin and his wife were left feeling their concerns had been dismissed after a meeting with a representative from the ministry on Wednesday.
He said the school told him it couldn’t put a supervisor on the bus because it didn’t have the funding and the ministry refused to fund such a solution.
“The ministry said it was not looking into [the incident] and it would not fund any solutions because this was an isolated case. They said, ‘if it happens, it happens’,” he said.
“I was very upset. I work in the healthcare sector, in aged care, and if we can prevent incidents we will prevent them! What if it gets worse? What if a child dies, will they wait for that to happen before they do something?”
He said the seating arrangements on the bus had changed but felt it wouldn’t adequately protect the children: “It’s still not enough! You need someone there to remove the risk.”
Erwin said the school had tried “for years” to get funding for a supervisor on the bus.
Patricia Avenue School principal Andrea Neil and board of trustees chair Lathan Awsome said in a statement to the Herald having an escort on the Sesta bus would support the safety of the children.
“However, providing escorts on Sesta vehicles is not within the scope of the current Ministry of Education contracts,” Neil said. Neither was funding up to the school, they said.
“The school is very saddened by this [incident] and is actively supporting both families and their children who are understandably distressed and upset by it.”
Erwin and his wife did not blame the 17-year-old, who they said had special needs himself.
“We don’t know who to blame. If only there were appropriate staff that did supervision inside the school bus, then this incident would have been prevented.”