Harris County Texas Sends Strong Message to People Who Hit Kids
Posted By The Editors | June 25th, 2010 | Category: Hot Topics | 6 comments
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By Stacey Patton
Good news in the battle against corporal punishment in schools! But not everyone, especially some in Houston’s black community, agrees.
This week two teachers, a principal and a superintendent were charged in connection with an April 29 videotaped beating of a 13 year-old student at Houston’s Jaime’s House Charter School.
The cell phone video shows the teacher, 40 year-old Sheri Lynn Davis, throwing a desk and then attacking a cornered and crouching Isaiah Reagins. Other students can be heard laughing and clapping as Reagins is then dragged across the floor, repeatedly slapped, punched and kicked. The boy’s mother said her son suffered knots, bruises and a black eye from the attack.
Davis was placed on administrative leave on May 5, after the boy’s mother notified the school about the incident. Witnesses said Davis “snapped” after Reagins made fun of a special needs student. Several students told police officers that four or five teachers watched the incident and threatened them if the video ever went public.
Davis was later fired from the school and then issued a public apology during a press conference at her attorney’s office. She has been handed a felony charge for the beating and faces up to 10 years in prison.
But Davis is not alone.
Charges have been filed against teacher Gabriel Hahn Moseley who was in the room at the time but failed to report the incident. She too was fired from Jaime’s House after an investigation. School Superintendent Ollie Hilliard and Principal David Jones were also charged with failure to report child abuse. The misdemeanor charges against the trio carry a maximum punishment of one year in prison.
A spokesperson for Jamie’s House said both Jones and Hilliard were shocked by the charges against them and said they are without merit.
In a surprising turn of events, Isaiah Reagins’s grandmother has said that the incident is being blown out of proportion. She says she agrees with the charges against Davis, but does not approve of the charges against Moseley, Hilliard and Jones.
Now, some of Houston’s black communities, political leaders and activists are criticizing Harris County prosecutors for pursuing criminal charges against the school staff. They fear that the school, which serves 130 at risk teens, will be forced to close.
“These charges against Jones and Hilliard are just overreaching,” said community activist Deric Muhammad. “One child has already been hurt. We don’t want 129 other children to be hurt. We want to learn from what has happened to Isaiah. We don’t want what happened to be exploited.”
Harris County Sheriff’s Office Spokesperson Christina Garza said investigators hope to send a strong message with the charges.
“The message that we want to send to people, regardless of where they work or who they are, is to report any type of incident – especially one involving a student or child being beat or kicked or struck. Failure to do so is a crime,” Garza said.
I applaud Harris County officials for this move. And I understand why Houston’s black community is upset.
The fact that a black teacher had the audacity to beat a child in a classroom, that black teachers stood around and watched, a black superintendent and a black principal tried to cover up the incident, and black students clapped and applauded during the beating speaks volumes about the perverse embrace of violence against children in black communities and throughout the society.
Too many black children are growing up to accept violence as a part of life and too many black people hit children, endorse it or look the other way when it happens. When parents, teachers and childcare providers hit children those acts reinforce that violence serves a normal function in our communities. To tell black parents and guardians to abstain from hitting their children is one battle. But to make an entire community, a village of people, reprogram themselves into thinking that hitting children is a form of violence is another monster!
I see black children being slapped, popped, whipped, yanked, threatened and cussed at in public spaces all the time. Dare I say something to the parent and I will be derided and even threatened. I watch people turn away or look on horrified, helpless and afraid to say something.
Houston’s black community might be outraged at the charges, but maybe their negative reactions speaks to their own fear of losing the power to control defenseless children through their reliance on violent childrearing tactics, ones that have been transmitted through generations of African Americans since slavery. But the fact is, Davis, Moseley, Jones and Williams broke the law and they should be held accountable, just as we would expect if those perpetrators had been whites that attacked a black child.
The law requires teachers and other professionals who interact with children to report incidents or suspicion of child abuse to authorities within 48 hours. But herein lies another problem: this law which is designed to protect the safety of children, exists in states like Texas where corporal punishment is legal.
How can we expect teachers to report incidents or suspicion of abuse when they are also given consent to do the very same thing they are asked to combat? I hope this incident in Houston will be exploited to prove that very point.
Violence should be foreign to children in school, at the grocery store, on the bus, in church – everywhere!
Stacey Patton is the Senior Editor of The Defenders Online and a writer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
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Great piece, thoughtfully done, and right on. Keep telling these stories they need to be read and heard!
Thank you for speaking out on the horrendous problem of abuse in the black community. Black children are often treated worse than animals at the hands of their own parents, usually the mother. These women lack the most basic of parenting skills which one would think would be a maternal instinct but apparently not.
Their children are not reasoned with like human beings but are instead yanked around, shouted at and cussed at like unwanted beasts. Small wonder they grow up lacking basic social skills and end up at the bottom of the social strata or worse yet incarcerated because they use violence instead of reasoning to resolve conflicts.
The idea of ‘at-risk teens’ witnessing violent abuse at the hands of adults who act more like violent overseers on a plantation instead of educational professionals makes my stomach turn. Every child who witnessed that beating and cheered it indicates their own learned depraved lack of empathy at suffering which we see all the time in the black community.
The compliant staff who witnessed this deserve to be fired and prosecuted and if their actions result in the closure of the school then so be it.
Children should not be subject to corporal punishment by anyone other than parents or legal guardians. It would be preferable if parents and guardians use some other method of punishment in most cases and only use spankings as a rare last resort. Most children respond well to other methods of correction, such as time-out and withdrawal of privileges. There are too many abused children and millions of adults who are still traumatized because of violence they experienced or witnessed as youngsters.
Visit Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill at http://www.Care2.com/c2c/group/AIMI
No! Children should not be “subject to corporal punishment by … parents or legal guardians” !! Not only is it cruel punishment but it doesn’t work! It has been growing generations of people who think that the right response when someone does something they don’t like is to hit them! It isn’t right. It isn’t fair. All it demonstrates is that the adult has no resources with which to deal with a child less than half their age and/or size. They have failed to exercise self-discipline. Because this phenomenon of hitting children in school is a national disgrace permitted in almost half our states, US Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York (which outlawed corporal punishment in all its schools in 1989) is today, June 29th, announcing her introduction of a bill in Congress that will protect all children nationwide from this abuse. As a parent, grandparent and long-time PTA activist, I urge you to contact your local congressional representative and urge him/her to co-sponsor and/or support this important bill. Your children are waiting.
It might appear that corporal punishment solves some short term problems, but unfortunately it has long term problems that affect the victim throughout life. If you have a look at the countries that use corporal punishment one sees that they are often beset by problems of violence and war.
Regarding Proverbs for the justification of beating, one reads this in Proverbs 31:6 and 31:7: “Give strong drink unto him who is ready to perish, and wine unto those who be of heavy hearts. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.” (Authorized King James). Now is such drinking good? To my mind people in countries that do not use corporal punishment generally exhibit a more refined and cultured way of life
Seriously? Time out? Go and give an “at risk youth” a time out and tell me how that works out for you. poorly? you don’t say. Maybe it’s because an “at risk youth” has had behavior issues in the past. A charter school is for kids that have acted so poorly public schools won’t deal with them anymore so how bout you look me in the face and say alternative punishments work cause that’s what public schools are using to discipline and clearly it failed on 130 kids. The Teacher is in the wrong for the extent of the violence, but please put yourself in her situation, she left her classroom to resolve a fight in the hall, her classroom then proceeds to lock her out, upon her return she can’t get in and witness this kid picking on a mentally handicapped girl, now imagine that that girl chances are she’s hurt and further more if kids where laughing at Isaiha getting hit they where most likely laughing at the girl as well. The teacher wasn’t right but if my kid was getting laughed at and ridiculed by this boy (has to be a reason the teacher chose him specifically) you bet your ass I’m going after the parents of Isaiha for not teaching their child better about compassion. there are wrongs everywhere around this but to say that this teacher should get 10 years is preposterous. At most give her a year in holding/minimal prison, 500 hrs community service, and a 5-10 year ban from working with children with a 3 year probation after if at any point she goes off like this again then by all means revert back to the full 10 year sentence with no reduction for the already served 1 year. Just my 2 cents.