Abuse of Disabled Students Could be Widespread

SUGAR HILL, Ga. - "They need to care about these children. Right now they don't."

That's how Sugar Hill pharmacist Robert Hammond feels about how Gwinnett County Schools handled his 12-year-old adopted son, Christopher, who has autism, cerebral palsy and several other disabilities.

Hammond says he took his son to an emergency room last year after finding bruises on his arms.

Then he said his son began resisting violently when they tried to take him back to school.

"Something's going on in that classroom," Hammond said, "because he's just putting up too much of a fight to get there, so I put a tape recorder in his pocket."

Hammond says the tape caught taunts and abuse by his son's special education teachers and that he settled out of court after a lawsuit.

His son's case is similar to that of an 11-year-old autistic Atlanta boy whose story 11Alive News broke on Monday.

That child's parents secretly recorded treatment that led a judge to rule the boy had been abused by teachers.

Also on Monday, a special education teacher and paraprofessional from Cherokee County's Woodstock High were arrested for allegedly abusing an autistic teenage boy and a blind teenage girl.

Unfortunately, all of these cases may just be the tip of a much more troubling iceberg.

The plight of hundreds of such abused children made national news in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.

Testimony at a Congressional hearing detailed the abuse of special needs children all over the country, some of whom died.

"This punishment is way, way out of bounds," said Representative George Miller who chairs the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Teachers say the problem is too little training for those who have to deal with severely disabled students.

"What does that look like in a classroom with 14 other students, or 16 other students, when you have arms flailing and kicking and screaming and scratching and spitting and biting?" asks Lisa Thomas of the American Federation of Teachers, "We have to prepare our teachers for this population of students."

Atlanta area child advocate Carol Sadler worked on two of the cases described at the Washington hearing.

She tells 11 Alive News, "They need to have people coming in and reviewing what these teachers and paraprofessional are doing. There needs to be more monitoring."

No one knows exact numbers for how many students are being abused because most of the children can't speak for themselves and there are often few witnesses.

There are no federal laws about restraining or isolating such students, but some suggest at least minimum standards and possibly even a national registry of abusive teachers who may move from state to state.

(NBC News contributed to this story)