Disabled boy attempted suicide after being suspended for touching teacher’s face, mother claims
A 16-year-old disabled boy who was suspended from school for touching a support worker attempted suicide after being left a “mental wreck” by the incident, his mother alleges.
Nadine Moore says her son, Liam, received the four-day suspension after he touched a student support worker on the face to turn her head towards him when frustrated in class. According to Moore, the school labelled the incident as assault.
Moore, a disability advocate in Coffs Harbour, said Woolgoolga high school had interviewed Liam against the recommendation of his psychologist and despite her asking the school to wait until she was present. A request had been made to the school following a suspension three months earlier, and again immediately following the incident.
Moore says she found him at school “an absolute mental wreck” after he had been asked to sign paperwork that confirmed he had been suspended for touching the support worker.
Liam, who is now 18, suffered a brain injury at birth. He has intellectual and physical disabilities and requires assistance in most aspects of daily life. The incident occurred in 2021 when Liam was in year 10.
“They had interviewed him. He was sobbing, and he said, ‘I assault women, Mum, I’m such a bad person. I don’t deserve to be alive’,” Moore told Guardian Australia.
“He just went into meltdown that night because he was told that he assaulted a woman. And then he tried to hang himself.”
Moore says she found Liam in his bedroom with his dressing gown cord around his neck.
“My beautiful kid, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, tried to kill himself.
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“My heart broke into a million pieces.”
In a “suspension resolution meeting” held after the incident, the school allegedly asked: how do you expect us to discipline him?
“I said, it’s not your job to discipline him. It’s mine. And I said, it’s your job to make adjustments for his disability. And it’s your job to educate him.”
Moore said that while she acknowledged Liam should not have touched the support worker, she didn’t believe that it constituted assault. She also said she believed the incident was dealt with as if he was a neurotypical child, with no consideration that his behaviour was due to his disabilities.
In a response to Moore’s complaint about the suspension, the school outlined the department’s suspension procedures, which state: “Any student who is physically violent, resulting in injury, or whose violent behaviour seriously interferes with the safety and wellbeing of others, is to be suspended immediately.”
“An injury was sustained by the staff member who was assaulted by Liam on this occasion, so this required immediate suspension,” the letter from the school’s acting principal said.
The letter also said that “Parental permission is not required for teachers or school executive staff to interview a student.”
“The decision to interview and resolve the issue was made in Liam’s best interest.”
The incident led to a complete breakdown in her communication with the school, which Moore says waschallenging for many years as she sought to have Liam placed in a mainstream class. She had wanted him supported in a regular classroom rather than being placed in a support unit with other students with disabilities.
Inclusive education means students with a disability are involved and supported in a mainstream school environment and school community with all other students.
This means that students with a disability are integrated into mainstream classes to learn with their peers and are not segregated into different programs or schools.
Inclusive education requires schools and teachers to make “reasonable adjustments” for their disabilities to enable this to happen.
The disability royal commission found that Australian schools did not consistently deliver an inclusive education that protected students with disability from violence, abuse and neglect.
It said that students with disabilities faced multiple barriers to inclusive education, “underpinned by negative attitudes and low expectations".
The obligation to ensure an inclusive education system is recognised under international law through the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD) to which Australia is a signatory.
The Australian government has sought to meet its obligations under the CRPD by imposing obligations on schools to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005.
Moore says she had no choice over which public school Liam attended as this was decided by the education department based on school resources.
Looking back on the early part of Liam’s school years, his mother is blunt.
“He wasn’t educated, he was babysat.”
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She claimed the school had not adequately taken into account his abilities when preparing learning material for him, citing one example when he was tasked with watching The Lion King when he was 16, despite being able to read. He was also regularly given colouring in activities to do, Moore claims.
“How was that appropriate? … He could have read the year 10 chosen book for the curriculum.
“He had the capacity to do well, not in a neurotypical way because he’s got brain damage, but he had the capacity to learn and to actually do a curriculum.
“His brain doesn’t work in a typical way because of the damage, but that shouldn’t have been an impediment to him actually getting an education.”
After a four-year battle, Moore finally succeeded in having Liam placed in a mainstream class in year 11, where she says he thrived, winning awards for history and English. He recently read War and Peace.
You can’t just give the teachers more resources and things will change
Nadine Moore
Moore says she feels like a failure for his lost years of education.“It’s so sad because I’ve read all the policies, I have studied all the standards and all of this stuff is word perfect on paper. It’s perfect, but it doesn’t translate that way on the ground.”
Moore claims that her requests for adjustments and Liam’s education plans were not properly considered and there was no independent body to which complaints could be directed.
In her work as an advocate, Moore says often families feel they are at war with the school.
“For Liam it was a nightmare, and I know a lot of parents with children with disabilities who say that the best day of their life was when their child left school. It’s so sad that you can get to 12 years of education, and all it’s brought you is heartache, and pain and misery and no result out of that.
“There’s so many things that could actually be put into place in the current system which would make it more viable for families and for kids with disabilities to be included.
“It’s such a long-term problem but if we don’t start chipping away at some of these really little things, then we’re never going to get down that road.”
Moore does not see the problems in the education system as purely resource-based, saying many wealthy private schools have the same difficulties. She believes it is a systemic problem of trying to apply a “one size fits all” education model to disabled kids.
“I don’t think you can’t just give the teachers more resources and things will change.
“They have to change the whole vision of what education actually is if they want to be able to include everybody that makes up humanity.”
A spokesperson for the NSW department of education said:
“The care and protection of children is our primary concern, and all employees have a duty of care to ensure students’ safety and welfare at all times.
“We know there is still work to be done, but we are committed to building a more inclusive education system, one where all students feel welcomed and are learning to their fullest capability.”
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
