Teacher Facing Assault Charges After Video Shows Her Dragging Autistic Child Through Hall

A 9-year-old autistic boy at Wurtland Elementary School, Kentucky, was subject to awful abuse by his teacher in a way no child should ever have to deal with. On Sunday, Angel Nelson shared video footage of her son’s teacher dragging him by the arm down a hallway in front of his classmates.

She was horrified to discover what her son had been subjected to, and fortunately, so was the school board. The teacher, who has been identified as Trina Abrams, was fired from the school after the incident came to light, and she now also faces assault charges over her treatment of the boy, according to a report by NBC News.

The footage shows Abrams dragging the boy from her classroom by the hand while he is sitting on the floor. His classmates are lined up against the wall of the hallway as she drags him past them. At one point, she stops and asks if he wants to walk instead, but when he refuses, she continues to drag him, unconcerned by the distress she is causing him.

The incident occurred in October last year.

Sherry Horsley, the superintendent for Greenup County Schools, made a statement saying that both Child Protective Services and the state’s education standards board were contacted shortly after the CCTV footage came to light, but the case has since been handed over to the police.

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“The Greenup County School District prioritizes the safety of our students,” Horsley’s statement read.

“All GCSD staff are trained to prevent incidents of restraint. Each school has a specially trained team to address immediate issues. In addition, each school has teachers specially trained to address autism related behaviors.”

The incident didn’t only cause the little boy embarrassment either, according to his mother. Nelson added that on top of the autism and ADHD he had already been living with, her son required further doctors visits since the incident and has also been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and depression.

“When you send your child to school you want them to be safe,” she said.

“The teacher is the farthest thing you should worry about.”

Nelson explained that Abrams had been pushing her son too hard, expecting much more out of him than he would be able to give due to his autism. It was during one of these incidents in which Abrams continued to push the boy to do more and better that the teacher apparently lost her patience with him and dragged him from the classroom.

“I worry about him because he does lack speech, and sometimes he can’t express how he’s feeling,” Nelson said. “He doesn’t understand why she did what he did.”

During the incident, the little boy sprained his wrist, and Nelson, quite understandably, immediately pulled her son from the school and enrolled him elsewhere, expressing her anger and disappointment at the way her son had been treated so brazenly and publicly at Wurtland Elementary School.