Elizabth Valeriay - Fairfield, CT

Fairfield police have arrested a special education teacher on allegations she punished a 6-year-old autistic student by making the girl take her shirt off in a classroom.
Elizabeth Valeriay, 53, of Madison was charged Tuesday with cruelty to persons.

Police say Valeriay was working at Dwight Elementary School in Fairfield last October when she made the girl take her shirt off for refusing to stop scratching her chest. A police report says the girl had become fixated on striped shirts and was wearing one that day.

Police say Valeriay told them she had been taught to verbally redirect students and remove distractions when they get distracted. She had been a special education teacher for 30 years.

http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/news_ap_fairfield_special_education_teacher_charged_with_cruelty_200901080848

Michelle Campbell - New Britain, CT

Attorneys for the families of special-needs students allegedly abused by a city teacher filed a petition Wednesday for a class-action complaint against the teacher and members of the Board of Education on behalf of what they believe may be a large number of victims.

"The number of children who were abused may be in the hundreds," said attorney James Sullivan of Howard, Kohn, Sprague & FitzGerald in Hartford. The complaint was filed in United States District Court, District of Connecticut in Hartford, and names Michelle Campbell, a teacher at Chamberlain Elementary School, for allegedly using unreasonable force, unlawful restraint and physical, psychological and emotional abuse against special-needs students dating back to 1999. Within three other counts in the lawsuit, it alleges civil rights violations, negligent infliction of emotional distress and breach of fiduciary duty, all against Superintendent Doris Kurtz, Chamberlain Principal Jane Perez and the Board of Education of the Consolidated School District of New Britain.

http://autismparents.net/what-are-they-smoking-at-the-new-britain-connecticut-school-district-and-why-is-michelle-campbell-still-teaching/

Jennifer Davila - Trumbull, CT

For a 9-year-old autistic girl, hell was riding the school bus every day.

That's when, police say, the 24-year-old bus monitor, Jennifer Davila, would torture the young girl, pinching her, poking her, wrenching the girl's small fingers as they drove along the route from the girl's home to school and back again.

Police said the girl's parents were trying to figure out how their non-verbal daughter kept getting bruises and sprained fingers on her right hand when on May 19 they received a call from the nurse at Frenchtown Elementary School that their daughter had arrived at school that morning crying hysterically. The parents then demanded to see the video from their daughter's school bus.

That video, which also had audio, showed Davila grabbing the girl's hands and the girl then crying out in pain.

http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Court-case-of-woman-accused-of-hurting-autistic-619181.php