This situation is insane. A mother was told at her school that her autistic child was being abused. The evidence? An ed assistant got a reading from a psychic!
A few bloggers have picked up on it. Pharyngula and Bad Astronomy have it stone cold right.
The weird thing about this is the reaction to the story that people have. The mother sounds like she’s the most level headed person in the whole train of events. Thankfully, Children’s Aid called the whole thing ridiculous and dropped the investigation. But only after the mother was able to prove with GPS and audio recordings her daughters movements and the goings on around her. Good for her! To her credit, she was astounded that the psychic was given any credence whatsoever.
What bugs me the most about this, is how some commenters on other sites have used this to broadly state again that teachers are idiots and the school system sucks. Let me make the obvious points. As a teacher in Ontario, I need to say this.
- The ‘abuse’ was reported by an assistant. Not a teacher. (if that helps)
- Not all educators are that stupid!
- Some of us would stand up and fight tooth and nail to prevent this sort of idiocy from happening.
So what goes on now? The school, board and others need to look at the situation and prevent a repeat. More importantly, the psychic need to be arrested and charged. I don’t know with what, but he/she caused a world of anguish for that mother, and needs to be help accountable. I wonder if they’ll predict that.
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October 26, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I would like to say that I too think this is a stupid thing to have happened. I don’t think that blaming it on an “assistant” is fair either.