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Concern about teacher not new
Complaints of abuse date back to 2005
By Tiffany Lankes
Published: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 1:00 a.m.
Staff members at Venice Elementary School say special education teacher Diana O'Neill called her students "retards" and hit them on the head when they answered questions incorrectly.
In 2005, two co-workers said she pulled a child's hand out of his mouth so hard she left a mark on his chin. That same year, another teacher said an aide saw O'Neill hold a child's nose and mouth shut while trying to feed her.
An investigative report released Monday by the school district details instances dating back to 2005 involving O'Neill, who has been charged with four counts of child abuse on her students.
But before this year, concerns about O'Neill never triggered a formal investigation or call to the state abuse hot line, where school employees are legally required to report abuse suspicions. The school's principal, Theresa Baus, warned O'Neill to watch her behavior, and passed complaints about the teacher on to district officials who left it up to Baus to handle.
Some teachers who suspected abuse and reported it to Baus were reprimanded for spreading gossip. And O'Neill stayed in the classroom, responsible for the well-being of a handful of the most vulnerable students in the district.
The teacher was arrested in February, after two classroom aides came forward with a log in which they documented more than a dozen instances when they say O'Neill hit, kicked and slapped students in her class.
Parents say they cannot fathom why action was not taken sooner.
"If a teacher is abusing kids, or is even suspected of abusing kids, you'd think they would report it," said Randi Munsell, whose son is one of the students O'Neill allegedly abused. "Maybe it would never have got to where it got with our kids."
The district's investigation was done by a private investigator hired to look into the most recent allegations against O'Neill and determine whether she can still work for the district.
O'Neill, who has taught special education at Venice elementary for 18 years, has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has been on administrative leave since her arrest.
School district spokesman Gary Leatherman said the district handled complaints about O'Neill appropriately. There was little evidence in the earlier cases to prove O'Neill physically harmed students, and none of the students in her class were injured.
"I don't know that anyone would have seen the previous reports as indicative of a pattern," Leatherman said. "Now, there's going to be a different perspective."
O'Neill's attorneys say that the aides mistook appropriate techniques for abuse.
They also point out that O'Neill is not accused of injuring any of the children. The attorneys say they have talked to former parents and students who speak highly of O'Neill's teaching abilities.
"There were numerous interviews with school employees and nurses who were in the classroom and never saw anything," said Peter Collins, one of O'Neill's attorneys.
According to the private investigator' s report, Baus said that O'Neill's aides may not have come forward sooner with their complaints about the teacher because they were afraid of the union.
"Diana is a senior union representative," Baus told investigators, the report says. "They were probably a little afraid of Diana, afraid of losing their jobs."
Pat Gardner, president of the Sarasota Classified/Teachers Association says she doubts the employees feared the union.
"I don't know why they would think that," Gardner said. "As far as we are concerned, that is ridiculous."
The union was paying O'Neill's defense attorneys after she was arrested. Gardner would not say whether the union continues to pay O'Neill's legal bills.
The first event in the private investigator' s report happened in February 2005, when another special education teacher and an aide told Baus that O'Neill yanked a child's hand out of his mouth so hard that it left a mark on his chin.
Baus told investigators that she contacted John Zoretich, the district's director of elementary schools, who told her to check the student for marks. Baus did not see any, so she warned O'Neill to watch her behavior and started spending more time observing her classroom.
The following school year, two different staff members went to Baus and reported that one of her aides had seen O'Neill forcefully feed a student, holding the child's mouth and nose shut in the process. Another time she made a boy stand behind his chair until he fell down, the staff members reported.
Baus told the investigator that she went and talked to the aide, who said she did not know anything. Baus reprimanded the two staff members for spreading gossip.
The principal fielded another complaint about O'Neill in October 2007 when the school nurse came to her with concerns about two students in O'Neill's class who had bruises and scratch marks on them.
Again, Baus contacted Zoretich and special education coordinator Kathy Devlin.
And again, Baus met with O'Neill and warned her that no one should be hurt in her classroom. O'Neill said some of the marks were caused by a belt she was using to help one of the children stand.
At that time, the principal also talked to O'Neill about whether she was feeling burnt out from the intensity of the job. O'Neill told her she would think about it, the report stated.
"In my mind, if she was rough, it wasn't intentional," Baus told investigators. "Because it didn't continue, I didn't think anything more of it."
After the October situation, the two aides in O'Neill's class started keeping a detailed log of instances when they thought the teacher was too rough with her students.
It was not until January 29, when O'Neill allegedly struck a student in the head, that the aides came forward to a school nurse, who went to Baus about it.
That is when Baus called the abuse hot line and reported O'Neill.
Baus told investigators that she did not question the aides about why they did not come to her sooner, but thought that it was because the abuse was not constant.
"The other thing they told me, as an example, on December 3, she smacked a kid in the head, well that may take three seconds out of a day that is 405 minutes long; the rest of the day may have been great ... and then you may have two or three days when nothing happens at all ...
"So it wasn't like it was a nonstop, constant abuse that was occurring every day," Baus said.
This story appeared in print on page A1
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