List the only two reasons you can restrain or seclude a student in michigan schools.

A girl at a school in New York defied her teacher’s instructions to finish an assignment and crawled under a desk. The teacher held her in a physical restraint in a chair for seven minutes.

In West Virginia, a teacher shut a 4-year-old alone in a bathroom until his hysterical screams made staff members in other rooms take notice. His mother, who worked a few classrooms away, believes her son was held in that bathroom multiple times prior. Years later, the boy is traumatized and doesn't attend school regularly.

Then, there was a 13-year-old autistic boy, Max Benson, who was held face down on the floor by staff members at a school in El Dorado Hills, Calif., for one hour and 45 minutes while he struggled, vomited and urinated until he lost consciousness. The next day, he died.

“He died over a long period of time in pain and fear in front of all of his peers,” his mother, Stacia Langley, said in a recent interview. “If there’s something worse that can happen to someone, I don’t even want to think about it.”

Every day in public and private schools across the country, children are “restrained” – physically held by staff members, pinned to the ground, or bound by mechanical devices such as straps or handcuffs. Other times, students are kept in “seclusion,” confined alone in rooms ranging from windowless small supply closets and bathrooms to spaces resembling padded cells. 

Restraint and seclusion, which are legal in most districts nationwide, are commonly used when students – particularly those with disabilities – are in distress, engaging in self-harm or acting in ways that could cause injury to themselves or others.

These practices are used thousands of times per school day nationwide. They cause thousands of injuries to students and staff members each year. While rare, dozens of young people have died after being restrained or kept in seclusion over the past three decades; most deaths have happened in residential facilities or other settings that cater to children with special needs. An untold number of students suffer lasting emotional trauma, including for those who witness the episodes, experts say.

It got to the point where I would hear the screams and bangs daily,” a kindergarten teaching assistant said said. “I could hear the children saying ‘help me, let me out.’ ...
— Nicole Farjani, kindergarten teaching assistant 

Yet many people don’t know this happens at all. Parents have in some cases gone weeks or years without knowing their child had been regularly subjected to these controversial interventions. Some families found out only after a child died.

These practices are meant to keep students in distress from hurting themselves or others. They are supposed to be a last resort in emergencies when other efforts have failed.

But a yearlong national investigation by Hearst Newspapers found that accountability and oversight of restraint and seclusion in schools across the country are sorely lacking. 

Some students are subjected to the practices hundreds of times in a school year or held in restraints or kept in seclusion rooms for hours at a time, records show. In some cases, children are restrained or secluded not as a safety measure but as a form of discipline. Handcuffs are sometimes used, and police are sometimes called.

Many schools use dangerous maneuvers, including restraining children in the prone, or face-down, position; federal education officials say prone restraints “should never be used” because they can restrict a child’s breathing.

A photo of a seclusion room taken in 2019 at an undisclosed school.

A time out room at Jackson Heights Elementary School in Glens Falls, N.Y. in 2022.

A time out room at Jackson Heights Elementary School in Glens Falls, N.Y. in 2022.

In schools across the U.S., students are sent to seclusion and "time out" rooms like these. | Contributed and staff photos In schools across the U.S., students are sent to seclusion and "time out" rooms like these. | Contributed and staff photos

Staff members who have no training in use of restraint and seclusion perform these interventions hundreds of times per year. In some places, state laws are routinely violated.

Government leaders have known about serious problems surrounding these practices for years. Advocates have pleaded for reforms. Changes have been slow and piecemeal.  Glaring gaps remain.

The interventions are performed by a variety of school employees, including teachers, aides, administrators and other staff. Staff members who use these interventions are frequently overwhelmed and under-trained, facing regular crises in the classroom that might be avoided with more resources or alternative methods. They, too, are routinely injured – even more frequently than students, data suggests.

“A child is in mania and climbing up the walls and throwing books at kids’ heads. What do you do?” said Ali Ford, a former special education preschool teacher in Nashville, Tenn., who said she has used restraints in difficult classroom situations. “It seems like there is only one answer right now.” 

Nationwide, these practices are used disproportionately on students with disabilities, Black students and boys, federal data shows. Students subjected to restraint and seclusion tend to be in elementary school, while some are preschoolers as young as 3 and 4 years old.

Some younger children and students with intellectual and physical disabilities may be particularly vulnerable because they cannot communicate easily, or at all, what happens to them, advocates said. 

Federal investigations in recent years have found some public school districts used restraint and seclusion in violation of students’ civil rights, including systematic discrimination. In recent years, for example, federal prosecutors have settled investigations into school use of restraint and seclusion in Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana and South Carolina.

But the head of the federal education office that conducts many investigations said its efforts are hampered by chronic understaffing.

Overall, these practices aren’t consistently monitored or regulated, Hearst Newspapers found.

State laws vary widely regarding the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. Some states, such as Idaho and Nebraska, have no laws limiting or regulating restraint and seclusion, while other states, such as Georgia and Maryland, ban seclusion as well as specific types of restraints.

Yet, even in states with laws governing how these interventions can be used, “lack of oversight and accountability have resulted in egregious violations, leaving students subject to a pattern of abuse,” a coalition of 17 state attorneys general wrote to Congress in 2021, urging lawmakers to pass federal legislation.

Indeed, there are major gaps when it comes to tracking how often these practices are used. There is no complete and reliable data on how often children are restrained and secluded in all U.S. schools. The federal government does not track how often the interventions result in death, injury or trauma. Few states do either.

Experts say attention to the issue – and solutions – are desperately needed. Education and training on alternatives to restraint and seclusion that have been successful at greatly reducing, even eliminating, the use of these controversial practices, but alternatives have taken hold in relatively few districts.

With a national youth mental health crisis fueled by the pandemic, some experts and educators fear the use of restraint and seclusion could grow even more in the coming school years. Some are seeing signs of increased use already.

Thousands of times per day

In a May 2012 Resource Document that still serves as its guidance today, the U.S. Department of Education said restraint and seclusion should be “avoided to the greatest extent possible” and only used when there is “imminent danger of serious physical harm to self or others.” There is no evidence the practices are effective at reducing problem behaviors in children, the department said.

Yet, some school districts use restraint and seclusion often.

“Restraint and seclusion are in use in higher frequency than is safe for students,” said Catherine Lhamon, who heads the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints around schools’ use of the practices.

Federal data shows restraints and seclusions happen at least 2,300 times per school day, on average, across the nation. Those incidents involve upward of 102,000 students each academic year. 

To be sure, only a small slice of the roughly 50 million students enrolled in public K-12 schools nationwide are subjected to these interventions. But experts and government officials agree many cases of restraint and seclusion go unreported.

Lhamon said her office finds “distressingly frequently” that schools don’t reliably document restraint and seclusion incidents and therefore cannot know themselves how often they use these methods.

“Where use of restraint and seclusion flies under the radar, it is at its most dangerous,” said Lhamon.

Roughly 80 percent of students subjected to restraint and seclusion were students with disabilities and about 82 percent were boys in 2017-18, the most recent year of federal data available. However, students with disabilities accounted for just 13 percent of the student population, and boys, 51 percent, nationwide that year.

About 28 percent of students subjected to physical restraint, and 23 percent of students subjected to seclusion were Black in 2017-18; yet, Black students accounted for just 15 percent of the student population nationwide that year.

Data suggests the number of students physically restrained in schools nationwide has risen.

The number of students physically restrained grew from 53,485 in 2011-12 to more than 71,300 in 2017-18. Meanwhile, the use of mechanical restraints dropped nearly two-thirds over that span and the number of students secluded remained relatively steady, hovering near 30,000 annually.

An analysis of data collected from state education agencies suggests incidents of restraint and seclusion increased from 2017-18 through 2018-19 and then cases dropped precipitously the next two years during the pandemic.

Federal data collection efforts are believed to suffer from significant underreporting. For example, at least 2,000 schools reported no or faulty data to the U.S. Department of Education for the 2017-18 school year, according to a Hearst Newspapers analysis.

A 2020 U.S. Government Accountability Office report found the federal Education Department had no processes in place to identify underreporting and did not follow up with many schools that reported suspiciously low figures, including the 70 percent of schools that reported zero cases. It also found some school and state officials did not clearly understand federal definitions of restraint and seclusion or which cases should be counted. (In June, the Education Department updated its data collection procedures to address some of those concerns.)

“Given how harmful restraint, seclusion and corporal punishment are and their lasting effects on kids, it is inexcusable that states and the federal government don’t have a better handle on the frequency of these practices,” said Denise Stile Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which supports federal restrictions on restraint and seclusion.

A major complicating factor in these federal data collection efforts: states define restraint and seclusion differently from one another, and differently than the federal government. Also, the federal government and states sometimes require schools to report different metrics.

For example, a Colorado rule says that holding a student in anything other than a prone position for less than 5 minutes does not constitute a “physical restraint.” Many other states do not define a “physical restraint” so narrowly.

Washington calls seclusion “isolation.” Some states ban seclusion, but permit the use of “time out rooms,” including Massachusetts and New York. Federal guidance says time out rooms, unlike seclusion rooms, are unlocked and students are monitored by adults in them.

No federal data is collected on the use of time out rooms. Some states don’t track it either.

The federal government, and some states, only track restraint and seclusion in public schools. There is often no data collected or made publicly available for privately-run schools, nor for residential treatment facilities, group homes and other settings that specialize in caring for and educating children with disabilities, experts said.

Scant tracking of injuries, deaths

A 2009 Government Accountability Office study on restraint and seclusion documented “hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on schoolchildren.” That study prompted the federal Education Department to begin tracking the use of these practices in schools. But to this day, federal data does not track information about injuries and deaths from restraint and seclusion.

Only 17 states track injuries, and 10 track deaths, resulting from restraint and seclusion practices.

A Hearst Newspapers review found that, while rare, at least 85 children, teenagers and young adults 21 and younger have died after being restrained or kept in seclusion over the past three decades in public and private schools, juvenile justice centers, residential facilities, or other settings that specialize in serving people with disabilities.

State data showed students were injured at least 1,062 times in the 2019-2020 school year during restraint and seclusion incidents. That’s based on just seven states that specifically track child injuries from these interventions. The national total is far greater.

Parents recalled children coming home mentally scarred from being subjected to these interventions. Some returned with bruises, scratches, abrasions or even broken bones after they were restrained in school.

“We would find the bruises in the shape of adult handprints on him,” said Cara Bailey of Vancouver, Wash., who said her son was repeatedly restrained at his public elementary school.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights believes every instance of restraint and seclusion imposes trauma on a child, Lhamon said.

State data suggests educators are injured in restraint and seclusion incidents more often than students. School staff members were hurt in restraint and seclusion incidents at least 2,291 times in the 2019-2020 school year, based on data from four states who count those injuries. Records showed and teachers recounted being kicked, punched, slapped, scratched, headbutted, bit and spit on before and during restraints or while placing a child in seclusion. 

Many states simply collect basic statistics around restraint and seclusion, such as incident counts. But a handful of states compile detailed data offering far greater insight and at times revealing concerning trends and patterns. Hearst Newspapers’ found:

Some students are repeatedly restrained and secluded.

• In Connecticut, in the 2019-2020 school year, two-thirds of the 2,748 students who were restrained by educators were placed in holds two or more times that year. Fourteen students were restrained more than 100 times.
• In Kansas, educators placed students in seclusion rooms 40,307 times between the 2017-18 school year and 2020-2021. Most often, data showed affected students were secluded once per year. But in 2017-18, one student was secluded 531 times, or an average of three times per school day. In other years, the maximum number of times a student was secluded in one year ranged from 210 to 494.

Students are often restrained and secluded or put in time out rooms for long periods.

• Both Connecticut and Kansas have recorded incidents in which students were restrained and placed in seclusion for more than an hour, sometimes for several hours.
• In Illinois, in the 2020-21 school year, the average duration of a restraint was 14 minutes. On average, children were confined in “time out rooms” for 29 minutes.

Particularly dangerous practices are used.

• Federal guidance on restraint and seclusion in schools states prone restraints – which involve holding a child face down on the floor and can restrict a child’s ability to breathe — “should never be used.” Yet data shows that in Florida the practice has been used on students with disabilities in 20 to 30 percent of restraint cases, over the past year.

Some interventions are unwarranted.

• Despite federal guidance advising these practices be used only in cases of “imminent danger of serious physical harm to self or others,” in Illinois, between 2018-19 and 2020-21, there were 6,763 incidents in which students were restrained or placed in timeout even though no danger had been identified.

Violations occur.

• Between 2018-19 and 2020-21, Nevada recorded 122 times when educators in public schools performed physical restraints in violation of state law, 24 illegal mechanical restraints, and 66 times when forbidden “aversive” interventions were used. Those interventions include corporal punishment, electric shocks, use of noxious odors, food deprivation or other methods were used.
• Vermont reported in 2019 that 71 percent of seclusions performed in the 2018-19 school year were in violation of their state rules on seclusion.

Some states don’t monitor the situation at all.

• While 39 states tracked at least some data on the use of restraint and seclusion, 10 states and the District of Columbia said they tracked no data at all. Alabama did not respond.

Parents in the dark

Limited data collection and scant oversight by state and federal governments into these practices have helped keep the issues of restraint and seclusion in public schools hidden from wide public scrutiny, according to Hearst Newspapers’ investigation.

Many people don’t know this happens in school.

Teacher Sheena Cureton had no idea colleagues in a nearby classroom were secluding preschool students in the bathroom, until one day a school social worker told Cureton a staff member was confining her son there. 

She rushed to the room and found a staff member pressing the bathroom door shut with her hand and foot, while her son, 4-year-old Reco Cureton, pounded on the wails and wailed hysterically inside.

Cureton believes her son was secluded more than once and that the fact her son is Black was a factor. But even as a teacher who worked just two rooms down the hall, she said she has never been able to get answers.

She’s not alone. Some parents don’t learn that their child was restrained or secluded until well after the fact. Some schools fail to notify parents in a timely manner or at all in certain cases, while some children are unable to communicate what happened to their guardians.

Cara Bailey of Vancouver, Wash., was there the first time her son Colin was restrained and escorted out of a building in kindergarten. But over the next several years, it was a battle to find out when and for how long Colin, who has autism, was physically restrained or confined in a seclusion room. When Colin was in third grade, Bailey made a complaint to the district. They handed her a stack of paperwork documenting dozens of times Colin was restrained over the past few months that she did not know about, Bailey said. 

Colin’s teachers used prone restraints on him, even after the boy had spinal surgery, Bailey said. School staff members also moved his desk out of his special education classroom and into a room where it was adjacent to the seclusion room that they confined him in regularly, she said. 

“He stopped wanting to attend, saying he hated school. But he couldn’t communicate at the time what was occurring,” Bailey said. “Years later, now he has flashbacks and will scream the teacher’s name. He has nightmares about her.”

Some parents turned to police, child protective services or state education officials for help, but many said they got none or were themselves investigated. Many said their only recourse was to file a lawsuit, if they could afford to hire an attorney.

Likewise, multiple teachers raised concerns that schools they worked at did not accurately report data on restraint and seclusion to the state or appropriately inform parents of the incidents.

Nicole Farjani, a teaching assistant, said she didn’t know that restraint and seclusion were used in New Jersey public schools until 2016 when she was shown a seclusion room that was being built in the special education classroom next to her room. Soon, she could hear noises coming from the other side of the wall, Farjani said.

“It got to the point where I would hear the screams and bangs daily,” Farjani said. “I could hear the children saying ‘help me, let me out.’ ... The (teaching assistants) working in that classroom told me children were wetting their pants, they were scared, they were put in for things like taking their shoes off and refusing to do schoolwork and defiance.”

Farjani reported what she heard and saw to her school board, but she said it was largely her word against the district’s. She said other educators were fearful of how speaking out could affect their career and stayed silent about how often the seclusion rooms were really used. Farjani said she faced fallout and eventually quit after 11 years of working in the district.

Hearst Newspapers contacted all of the school districts referenced in this story. Some did not comment. Vancouver Public Schools said they could not comment on individual student situations due to privacy laws, but used restraint and seclusion in accordance with state law. They said they believe restraint and seclusion “should only be used as a last option in extreme situations when a student exhibits dangerous behaviors toward self or others, when a risk of serious and imminent physical harm or injury is evident, and when other de-escalation tactics have failed.”

Cabbell County Schools in West Virginia, where Reco Cureton attended, said they do “not permit the seclusion of students in bathrooms or any other spaces in our schools.” But the district did not clarify if the practice was performed or permitted previously.

Gaps in training

Restraint and seclusion migrated to public schools from psychiatric institutions and group homes that used to provide care for children with disabilities before these children were guaranteed a right to a free public education, according to Reece Peterson, a former professor of special education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who testified before Congress about restraint and seclusion.

Today, several private companies offer training programs to teachers on restraint and seclusion techniques, said Joseph Ryan, a professor at Clemson University, who consults with public school districts on restraint and seclusion and behavioral management.

Some of the programs spend more time teaching how and when to perform restraints, while others emphasize de-escalation and behavioral strategies to avoid crises in which restraints could be used, Ryan said.

Many schools will send one or a few staff members to training seminars. They in turn provide training to their colleagues in the district, often for a few hours.

One such program, called Therapeutic Crisis Intervention for Schools, was developed by Cornell University researchers who built a curriculum around de-escalation and the limited use of physical restraints for residential child care facilities, like group homes and juvenile justice settings.

Martha Holden, the lead developer of the TCI system, said those settings have many regulations on the use of restraint, more oversight of the practices and they debrief after incidents. But in more than a decade of schools using the model, they’ve seen schools struggle to follow the same principles, Holden said.

“The biggest feedback we get is the schools don’t do it,” Holden said. “They don’t have time. They don’t have a supervisory structure.”

Interviews suggested that overwhelmed teachers in under-resourced classrooms with high student-to-staff ratios, frequent staff turnover, lack of access to specialists or zero-tolerance school climates may perform restraints and seclusions more often when unable to identify or meet students’ educational or emotional needs.

Several teachers agreed many educators don’t receive much coaching on how to handle difficult student behaviors in the classroom.

When he first started as a special education teacher in Arizona, Brian Dalla Mura said he performed restraints “more than I would like to admit,” and also used the seclusion room in his classroom.

“I would create situations where I was escalating a student – not intentionally, but I was a brand new teacher and I thought what I was doing was right,” Dalla Mura said. Eventually, with help from more veteran colleagues, he learned new approaches.

Later, while working at a new district in Vermont, he saw educators using prone restraints and seclusion on a regular basis, he said. He felt teachers were “going straight to” these inventions to respond to non-emergency situations like children ignoring instructions. 

Dalla Mura said he confronted school administrators, but they disagreed. Frustrated, Dalla Mura eventually resigned from the district in March and publicly advocated to the local school board in favor of changing district policy.

In July, the district, Harwood Unified Union, got a new superintendent who launched a review of the restraint and seclusion in their schools. The superintendent placed a moratorium on prone and supine restraints and asked the Vermont Education Agency to review school practices.

In other places, teachers told Hearst Newspapers they didn’t have the personnel, resources or time to identify the “triggers” that preceded aggressive student behavior or experiment with alternative measures that could alleviate them.

Left to cope in classrooms with students who may hit, kick, bite, destroy property or try to escape, some burned-out teachers told Hearst Newspapers they felt they didn’t see another way to respond – even if they didn’t agree with restraining or secluding children.

“(The training) talks about de-escalation techniques, but to be quite honest I don’t see them used very often,” Ford, the former special education teacher from Nashville, said. “They often need one-to-one attention, and often you have one teacher with 20 students.”

Ford said she used restraints on a near-daily basis while teaching in person. When she quit in 2021, it was due to the stress of responding to constant classroom crises, including using physical restraints on children.

“I think the restraint does not make them feel safe,” she said, adding she would never support restraints being used on her two children with autism.

Despite federal guidance advising the practices be used only in cases of “imminent danger of serious physical harm to self or others,” interviews with numerous educators revealed restraint and seclusion are often used to handle students who are not complying with instructions. Some state laws, including New York and Mississippi, allow teachers to restrain or seclude children for property damage or disrupting a classroom. 

Federal guidance is only a recommendation to schools, however. A push to pass a federal law has lacked the support of America’s top two teacher’s unions, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, who for more than a decade, have not endorsed federal legislation to restrict the use of restraint and seclusion in school.

But in a rare public statement on the issue, Randi Weingarten, the AFT president, called for banning seclusion and severely limiting restraint. 

“Physical restraint should be used only when there is imminent danger of injury, and only when imposed by trained staff. Secluding students should never be allowed, nor should mechanical restraints,” Weingarten told Hearst Newspapers. 

She added that teachers and school professionals need a variety of supports and contingency plans in place to help them help all students including those with medical and behavioral needs. 

Weingarten said professional development on restraint and seclusion is a “must,” noting that too often funds are diverted. She also supports data collection efforts, saying, “we need to be sure data is collected on the number of staff injured as a result of restraining students who posed a danger to themselves or others.” 

An NEA spokeswoman said the union does not have a position on proposed federal legislation and declined to answer other questions.

Reducing restraint, seclusion

Max Eden, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, testified before Congress in February saying restraint and seclusion are necessary to deal with some student behavior and keep teachers safe.

“Anyone who has ever been to school knows that sometimes situations escalate beyond the power of a teacher’s calming word,” he said. “Then the question becomes not whether, but rather how, they will be restrained and secluded.”

Yet, formal research, as well as on-the-ground experience in schools nationwide, suggests that restraint and seclusion can be reduced drastically by focusing on meeting students’ needs and defusing tense situations before they escalate.

A 2018 study by Grafton Integrated Health Network, a Virginia-based facility for children and adults with intellectual, developmental, and psychiatric disabilities, found that implementing a new model for addressing challenging behavior all but eliminated restraint and seclusion, while also reducing staff injury and helping patients meet goals.

A growing number of school districts have seen similar results, trading restraint and seclusion for a more careful approach that emphasizes student comfort.

 “If Johnny is not doing well in math and every time we try to introduce math he throws chairs all over the room and breaks windows, we need to figure out how we're presenting math,” said Kim Sanders, a behavioral health specialist whose model has helped reduce restraint and seclusion in hundreds of schools and other settings.

 “Should it be a different part of the schedule?” said Sanders. “How else can we teach it so he loves math? It’s putting the responsibility back on the adults to be the problem solvers.”

 With youth mental health suffering from pandemic-related impacts, some fear that restraint and seclusion use could spike in the next few years.

“The social and emotional needs of our kids have been [at levels] we’ve never seen, and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon,” said Christopher Drezek, superintendent of the Enfield, Conn. school district.

“[The pandemic] was hard on us and we’re adults,” Drezek added. “Can you imagine what it is like for a fifth grader who got sent home in March of 2020, and you expect him to come back and sit in a chair for seven hours a day?”

Long-lasting effects

Eric Feit vividly remembers the hours he spent pacing inside the small, empty instrument closet as a teacher leaned against the door blocking him inside. 

In fourth and fifth grade on Long Island, staff members would physically restrain Feit and bring him to the instrument closet, where he was held with no bathroom breaks or access to food or water, according to Feit’s account as well as his mother Lisa and documents they shared with Hearst Newspapers. It was a pattern that continued into middle school with an electrical room and then a closet off the gymnasium.

“Any time they would see on my face that I was a bit upset … they would remove me from the room preemptively and put me into one of these time out rooms, which of course would just make things worse,” Feit said.

Feit eventually found a local school that did not use these interventions. He participated in intensive therapy and decided to return to his public school for more rigorous academics and social opportunities. He graduated with honors and received scholarships. 

But Feit, now 23, still struggles when he is upset and strangers confront him in certain ways. At a college summer program, he was once followed by security while walking around campus, grabbed a stick and warned a man to leave him alone.

“Eric is getting retraumatized in life as he was already through the school district,” Lisa Feit said. “Now he’s an adult ... He could be arrested. He could be charged… There were definite times when he was acting out and he shouldn’t have been acting out. But locking him in a closet is why he became aggressive. Forcibly restraining him is why he became aggressive.”

Most of the students and parents interviewed by Hearst Newspapers said they or their child received a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis after experiencing restraints and seclusion in school. Students felt unsafe going to school and many were homeschooled for a few years after their experiences. Multiple parents said they lost their jobs because they were repeatedly called to pick up their child from school after restraint or seclusion incidents.

Sheena Cureton, who discovered her 4-year-old blocked in a bathroom by a school staff member in West Virginia, immediately stopped sending her son to the school.

In the course of confronting the school district about the seclusion, Cureton, who worked for the district, said she faced resistance and decided to leave her job.

Since the incident, Reco, now 8, has since been diagnosed with autism. 

“Even now, he uses the bathroom with the door open,” Cureton said. “He’s scared of the dark.”

Reco has mostly been homeschooled, Cureton said. When he tried to go to other schools, he was restrained and would scream, “I hate you” at a wall until Cureton picked him up, she said.

Out of work and trying to find a new school for Reco, Cureton and her two kids were homeless for a month as they moved around. They’re now in stable housing, but the ripple effects of Reco’s seclusion live with them.

Cureton now volunteers for a nonprofit advocacy organization, Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, and is working on her own efforts to help children with disabilities locally.

“It changed our whole entire lives, this incident,” Cureton said.

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