Parents Sue Over Humiliation
By Susan Jacobson, Sentinel Staff Writer
Originally published in the Orlando Sentinel, June 2, 2002
KISSIMMEE — A boy who was tied to a chair, pelted with wadded paper towels and threatened with hanging as punishment can't shake the incident and is taking medication for depression, his mother said.
He changed schools. He changed friends. He is embarrassed about what happened May 10, 2000, in a St. Cloud High School auto-shop class.
Now, the boy's parents are suing the Osceola County School Board, the school superintendent, the St. Cloud High principal, a teacher and a former teacher. They want someone to acknowledge the severity of what happened to their son, who is now 16, said his mother.
The Sentinel is not identifying the family because of the nature of what happened.
The teacher supervising the class, Raymond Campbell, was arrested on a charge of child abuse, but the State Attorney's Office declined to prosecute. He was fired on May 26, 2000.
"How do you ever forget something like that?" the boy's mother asked. "This was really the only recourse we had when we found out the charges were dropped against the teacher. They made it look like he didn't do anything."
Campbell, 53, would not comment. Another teacher, William Price, still works at the high school and also is being sued. He saw the initial part of the incident, according to police reports, but he went to help two students work on a car. Price said last week he wasn't involved and didn't see the boy being tormented by his classmates. Price, 49, was not arrested or prosecuted.
Police reports show the boy, who has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, was acting up in class, so Campbell told him that if he wanted to be the center of attention, he should climb into a plastic chair the teacher placed on a table.
Campbell, the lawsuit claims, then gave nearly 40 other students permission to do whatever they wanted to him.
Several students threw wet paper towels at the boy, a couple of them tried to stuff towels in his mouth, one poked him in the buttocks with a stick while others taunted him. Several tied his legs to the chair and tried to tie his arms. One put a rope around his neck and threatened to hang him, police records show.
The incident lasted five to 15 minutes, witnesses said, and occurred when the boy was 14 and in ninth grade.
Two classmates pleaded guilty to battery in juvenile court, said Joseph Taraska, the parents' attorney, and several others had their cases heard in Teen Court.
A psychologist wrote that the boy suffered nightmares, flashbacks, fears, anxiety and feelings of social alienation, anger and sadness after the assault.
"I couldn't get him out of bed a lot of the time," his mother said.
The boy is doing better now, making new friends, studying for a computer career and looking forward to his senior year in high school, but he will never be the same, said his mother, who is a pediatric nurse.
The lawsuit alleges the school district failed to properly train and monitor its teachers in how to behave with special-needs students.
The family seeks at least $15,000—the standard in Circuit Court—for medical expenses, physical, mental and emotional injury, humiliation, anguish and the parents' loss of the boy's companionship.
No trial date has been set.
