The Stuff Of Nightmares

I didn’t plan to write today about a school bus aide in Colorado.

But plans change.

Once I saw a security tape of a grown woman beating up on a little boy on a Littleton Public School bus, I couldn’t think about anything else.

The details of the case make it all so much worse. Just one more case of indifferent school officials failing to take complaints about school safety seriously. (In Newport News that resulted in a teacher being shot. In this case, it’s severely disabled kids being abused.)

Seems Kiarra Jones, 29, was arrested and charged with felony assault for attacking a 10-year-old boy named Dax. She was caught on school bus security cameras abusing the poor kid. In it, she elbows him, hits him and stomps on his foot.

There’s more. Dax is autistic and non-verbal. So were two other children whom police believe were also tortured by this woman.

In other words, she was picking on helpless kids who couldn’t tell on her.

How convenient.

“If I could say one thing to Littleton Public Schools, it would be ‘How dare you?’ How dare you fail my son in such an astonishingly, preventable way,’” Dax’s mother said at a press conference Thursday.

Dax’s parents said they didn’t want their son’s face blurred in the video because they wanted the world to see their precious son. He came home this year with bruises on his legs and body, a black eye and a missing baby tooth that hadn’t been loose in the morning when he left.

All of the mistreated kids were reportedly crying a lot and exhibiting signs of depression. That, of course, was their only way of communicating their pain.

What’s captured on the tape is pure evil.

This wasn’t just one incident, police say. The parents of these kids - did I mention they can’t communicate? - have been complaining to school officials since September about mysterious bruises on their children and behavioral changes.

Put yourself in the place of one of these children. Can you imagine the horror of being trapped in a little body, being abused by an adult when your parents - your protectors - weren’t around and you were unable to tell anyone what’s happening?

It’s the stuff of nightmares.

There are many unanswered questions in this ghastly case. First, if the police are correct and this behavior has been ongoing, how is it that the bus driver didn’t see what the aide was doing to the kids? What’s the point of security cameras on buses if no one ever looks at them? What exactly did school officials do to investigate reports of suspected abuse?

Colorado Public Radio reports that three families have hired lawyers and are suing the school district for failing to care for their children.

Ed Hopkins Jr. is an attorney representing three families so far and called for Littleton Public Schools to hold themselves fully accountable.

“This was an institutional failure. Multiple people had to fail for this to happen,” Hopkins said. “There was video in the bus and it still happened over months. The family reached out to the school and it still continued to happen over months. That’s failure…”

The parents overwhelmingly said in interviews that the news of the abuse has created a renewed crisis of trust in a world where they have to fight every day for their kids.

“We fight with school districts over our kids’ IEPs (individualized education plans). And we fight with doctors. We fight all damn day,” Brittany Yarbrough said. “But we never, it never even occurred to us, that it could be someone on the bus. Because you shouldn’t have to fight for their safety. That just wasn’t even a thought. It’s like, of course, they’re going to keep our kids safe. Forget about the education. Keeping our kids safe was something we never questioned.”

Jones was released on a $5,000 bond. Felony assault in Colorado carries with it a prison term of 10 to 30 years. No matter what the punishment, it isn’t enough for someone who would deliberately harmed a helpless, severely disabled kid.

Then again, as a person of faith I believe there’s a special place in hell for child abusers.

Jones has a court date next month.

Look at the video yourself, but be warned, once you see it you can’t unsee it.

(Embedded video provided by Rathod Mohamedbhai LLC Attorneys at Law)

Kiarra Jones