What sort of monsters would abduct an 8 year old girl with Asperger’s Syndrome, chaining her and leading her away from her friends and family?  You can tell where this is going.

Yes, the police.  And her teachers.

The mother of an 8-year-old autistic girl who was arrested after a scuffle with her teachers said it was horrifying to watch her daughter be led away in handcuffs from her northern Idaho elementary school.

Police in Bonner County, Idaho, charged the girl, Evelyn Towry, with battery after the arrest Friday at Kootenai Elementary School.

Even though prosecutors dismissed the case Tuesday, the family is considering legal action against the school. They say their daughter was physically restrained to the point of causing bruises and is now tormented by memories of the incident.

I’ll bet she is.  Asperger’s is a “high-functioning” form of autism, characterized, in place of the truly bizarre behavior that often accompanies autism, by mere inability (without intense training) to understand group dynamics, social rules, and an inability to distinguish physical contact that is appropriate from that which is not.

In this case, Evelyn Towry’s Asperger-induced transgression was that she did not wish to remove her “cow hoodie” (a white hoodie with ears and black spots) before joining fellow students for cake at a party.  So the teachers restrained her and isolated her.  There is no indication, at all, that Evelyn’s fellow students objected to the cow hoodie.  No, the individuals behaving like children here were Evelyn’s teachers.

And, as Scott Greenfield points out, the Bonner County police, who when called to arrest this 54 pound menace to society, charged her with battery and led her off in handcuffs.  An adult, to say nothing of a responsible policeman, might have exercised his discretion, not, as Scott suggests, to avoid arresting Evelyn, but to tell her teachers to grow the fuck up, give the girl her cake, and don’t call again unless it’s a Columbine.

Sadly for the Towrys, if they wish to sue on Evelyn’s behalf, the odds don’t look too good right now.  We’ve invested teachers with such authority, in the name of protecting children, that they can get away with the sort of misconduct that would get anyone else arrested.

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