The good news is that we don’t find stories like this every day.  The bad news is that we find them at all.  Skelly at Arbitrary & Capricious posts about the confluence of great minds in Idaho, a joint venture of school and police, that arrived at the brilliant solution of arresting, handcuffing and leading away an 8 year old girl with Aspergers Syndrome.  They must have been so very proud of themselves, nailing the perp.

And what heinous crime demanded such swift and severe response?

Spring Towry said she got to the school… just in time to see 54-pound Evelyn – who was diagnosed at age 5 with Asperger’s Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism – being walked to a police car with two officers at her side. “She started screaming ‘Mommy, I don’t want to go! What are batteries? What are batteries?'” Towry said. “She didn’t even know what she was arrested for.”

Towry, who lives in Ponderay, said Evelyn told her that she had been refused entry into a school Christmas party that had been delayed until after the holidays because of a string of snow days, because she refused to take off her beloved “cow costume” – a hoodie with cow ears and a tail.

That’s right, the old “cow hoodie” caper.  We can’t have 8 year old children wearing cow hoodies.  What’s next?  Go-go boots?

While the stupidity of this scenario lends itself to some obvious humor, this really isn’t funny at all.  This young girl had Aspergers, and required a little special handling to address whatever rules the adults from the school decided were so overwhelmingly important that they could not possibly allow her to enjoy the party in a cow hoodie.  As such, they should have known, and understood, how to manage an autistic child.  We expect the people who are charged with the care of children to know such things. It’s part of their job, their responsibility.  And frankly, while it takes a little bit of actual thought and understanding, two things in short reserve in schools, it just isn’t all that hard to do.

According to ABC News, here’s what our respected educators had to say about the incident:

Dick Cvitanich, superintendent of the Lake Pend Oreille School District, which includes the school where Evelyn was a student, said the school called police because “there was escalating behavior that resulted in what we perceived to be an assault on staff.”

At a hearing on the case Tuesday, the prosecutor “said that he didn’t think at this time it would be beneficial to pursue it because of her age and, of course, her condition,” Towry said.

Evelyn was at court for the hearing, but “she didn’t exactly know what was going on,” Towry said.

Cvitanich said Evelyn’s outburst Friday was the culmination of a series of incidents “that demanded staff intervention.”

“It’s definitely not typical,” he said of the decision to call police on a child as young as Evelyn, “and not something we particularly want to do or like to do.”

Rarely does one see as many wiggle words captured in the same facially ridiculous statement.  But the real story appears to be that a female teachers grabbed and held the child and the child pinched the teacher’s breast (not deliberately, but because it was the nearest body part to pinch) to be released.

The school’s response to Evelyn’s outburst and the string of events that led to it were completely inappropriate, says Dr. Pauline Filipek, associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, and pediatric nurse practitioner Teri Book, who share a practice specializing in pediatric neurology.

Book, the mother of a 17-year-old daughter with Asperger’s, said children with high-functioning autism create the illusion that they are capable of communicating in the same way as children who do not have developmental disabilities.

In reality, Book said, they may have an animalistic “fight or flight” mentality when it comes to confrontation. Many have “tactile defensiveness,” meaning they are hyper-sensitive to any type of unwanted physical contact.

In other words, the school created the problem and then blamed the child for trying to break free of their control.  And that’s really the crux of the matter.  The inability to maintain absolute control is, in itself, the most heinous crime that can happen to a teacher.  Whatever empathy may exist otherwise, do not challenge their control.  It’s their lifeblood, and the petty people who demand it cannot bear to lose it, especially to an 8 year old autistic girl.

As for why the police didn’t exercise the slightest bit of discretion in the handling of this disgrace, no explanation is offered.  If I was cynical, I would react that no explanation is needed and no explanation would matter.  But I can’t help myself from adding, did the big, tough cops feel proud of themselves for saving their fellow public employees from this vicious child?