(WXYZ) — Jaime Nelson can never forget her son's screams for help that were captured on video after a bus aide hit her special needs son. The aide was recently convicted of child abuse, but Nelson says the school hid the incident from her for five weeks.
Now she’s taking on Ann Arbor Public Schools to get to the truth and protect other families.
“Our job is to protect our kids. And the school didn't give me that chance because they hid it from me,” Nelson told 7 Investigator Heather Catallo.
Nelson says it took her weeks to learn what happened to her 7-year-old on his school bus.
Even now, 18 months after the assault, Nelson says still doesn’t have answers or an apology from the district.
“It can't happen again. I am disgusted that it happened once, and I'm fearful that there's no reason it would change if someone didn't come forward,” said Nelson, a long-time educator.
Nelson’s son is autistic and severely emotionally impaired. Back in December of 2021, she fought to get him into a special education program at Carpenter Elementary. But after his first day, when the second grader got off the school bus for special ed students, Nelson knew something was seriously wrong.
“He ran past me, ran in the house, slammed the door and actually locked me out- something he has never done in his life. And the bus aide gets off the bus and she is worked up and she said, ‘They say I can't hit him. So I don't know what you want me to do,’” said Nelson.
Nelson says she was stunned by that statement and asked why the aide hadn’t been told that her son was special needs, especially because each of the kids on that bus are in the same special education program.
“She would call me and say, ‘I'm about to videotape him and show you what he's doing.’ And then she would threaten him while she was on the phone with me saying things like, ‘You're going to have trouble when you get home.’ And I said, ‘that doesn't work with him,’” said Nelson.
Nelson says she immediately alerted the school about the bus aide and her son's intense reaction to the bus rides. She says she wasn’t told for 5 weeks that what really happened just days after he started at the new school was an alarming assault that was caught on video.
On December 14, 2021, video from the bus shows bus aide Rochanda Jefferson saying to the child who swiped his arm at the aide (a common behavior for someone with his disability), “I’m gonna hit you back… I whoop kids.” The aide can then be seen on the video aggressively slamming the child into a seat. She then puts him in a STAR harness, something Nelson says is illegal for her son because it’s not in his IEP.
In the video, you can see the aide hit the child multiple times while he’s restrained. Then the terror for the boy continues as he tries to get away and gets caught in the harness straps, suspending the child upside down. The child shrieks for several minutes, and the aide, standing over him while he struggles, saying to him: “You did this.”
“I don't know how anyone in the world couldn't help a child and she stood there, and she said, ‘I'm not going to help you. You've got yourself into this,’” said Nelson.
Once the boy frees himself, the aide then tells the bus full of special needs students that they could all go to jail.
“That’s OK he’s going to jail. You’re old enough to go to jail. You don’t have to be no certain age to go to jail, they got children's jail for kids,” said the aide. Later on the video, Jefferson can be heard complaining about her nail being broken after the assault.
Even though she kept asking teachers questions about her son’s extreme distress after bus rides, Nelson says it took more than a month for Carpenter Elementary’s principal to reveal in an email on January 19, 2022 that there “have been two incidents shared that have resulted in unsafe conditions” for her son and other students on the bus. Nelson asked to see video of the ‘incidents’ but was only allowed to see the footage of one incident from December 14, 2021 -- months later after the police got involved.
According to the lawsuit, the child’s teacher said she had seen “escalated behavioral issues” at the end of the day as the boy anticipated having to ride the bus. The teacher told Nelson “that she spoke with the Principal of Carpenter Elementary... about the bus concerns.”
“He didn't get on that bus. Adults in authority who could have saved him, put him on that bus and told him to walk up those stairs, with that woman still there,” said Nelson.
Nelson says she later learned that several special education students on that bus told their teachers and social workers at the school right away about the assault, yet Nelson says nothing was done after that was reported to the school principal the day after the assault.
According to the lawsuit, no one at Ann Arbor Public Schools alerted Child Protective Services at the time school staff was alerted, even though they are legally required to do so. On January 18, 2021, the boy’s teacher emailed the principal and other AAPS officials saying “I am very concerned about this situation and the safety of our students… I haven’t received an update on the allegations that were shared. I am concerned that I am going to lose all credibility with mom when she finds out I knew about these allegations and didn’t tell her. I don’t feel comfortable keeping this from mom.”
Nelson did not learn of the assault until the next day after that teacher emailed the principal. That’s why she feels now she has no choice but to sue the district, the bus company, and the principal.
Megan Bonanni and Danielle Canepa are Nelson’s attorneys.
“What stands out to me about this case is the indifference of the school administrators when they became aware of the reports from children about the abuse of the child in this case,” said Canepa. “The administrators waited five weeks to alert the mother or take any significant action.”
“Our concern is that if this had happened on a bus carrying a general population of students, there would have been emails sent district wide. The aide would have been immediately taken off of the bus and an investigation would have ensued,” said Bonanni.
Nelson and her attorneys say they want to see the laws improved in Michigan to keep kids safe.
Bonanni says they want “protection for children from the moment they walk into the doors of the school until they walk into the doors of their home, and this didn't happen here in our most vulnerable population of students.”
Police reports obtained by the 7 Investigators show Durham Transportation had to move Jefferson to three different buses during her year-and-a-half of employment “because of problems with her on other buses.” A Durham Transportation employee told police that Jefferson “had previously threatened a teacher and stated to the teacher ‘I will F you up.’”
Nelson says she’s grateful the bus aide was convicted of 4th degree child abuse and won’t be able to work with kids again, but she says her son’s trauma is still ever-present.
“The world is already hard for him. It's hard for special needs kids. It's hard for autistic kids. It's hard for kids that don't have all the tools that a neurotypical kid has. And the last thing he needs is one more thing. The last thing he needs is another trauma, another reason to mistrust people. Another reason to be scared in this world,” said Nelson.
Nelson, who also has a 17-year-old son, wants to educate the community about the importance of compassion and education when it comes to children with special needs.
“When you're the parent of a neurotypical student that gets all A's, you are a wonderful mom and you are invited to every party and you're the room mother and you chaperone and you are told what a great parent you are over and over and over again. When you are that exact same mother to a neurodivergent child— people are cold. People are cruel. People do not have any empathy about what it's like, especially as a single parent,” said Nelson.
"The safety of students and staff is always the top priority of the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Staff at Carpenter Elementary and the transportation team followed appropriate procedures in responding to this unfortunate incident. AAPS and Durham Transportation team removed the offending individual from duty on the day the incident was observed on the video and contacted Child Protective Services immediately. There was no delay in removing the individual from duty, and AAPS and Durham teams dutifully followed through on this case up to and including a member of the Durham staff testifying at a hearing in recent weeks,” said Andrew Cluley, AAPS Director of Communications in a statement.
A spokesman for the bus company, Durham Transportation, sent the 7 Investigator this statement:
“Safety is our priority, and we can confirm that we took prompt action by removing the former aide on the same day the incident was observed on the video. Immediately after, we contacted both our customer and Child Protective Services. The Ann Arbor Public Schools team and our team collaborated closely throughout, and we fully cooperated with local authorities throughout the process.”
Rima Mohammed, President of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education, released this statement on behalf of the board to the 7 Investigatators:
"The Board recently learned of the bus incident that occurred in December 2021 and we are deeply concerned and dismayed. Student safety is always our top priority in the AAPS, and we are very sorry to hear about how this incident has impacted the child and the family. As always, we will take all allegations seriously and address them promptly."
The 7 Investigators have also reached out the bus aide and her attorney for comment, but so far we have not heard back. The court docket indicates she is scheduled to be sentenced in September.
If you have a story for Heather Catallo, please email her hcatallo@wxyz.com