Teacher used dish detergent to discipline child with special needs

Teacher used dish detergent to discipline child with special needs

MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) – An Horry County School District teacher has been arrested for unlawful neglect of a child, allegedly after disciplining a child with special needs with dish detergent, according to a Myrtle Beach Police incident report.

On Thursday, police responded to Myrtle Beach Intermediate School, where a witness told them 57-year-old Moncille Thomas put dish detergent on her fingers, and then put her fingers inside the mouth of a non-verbal autistic child, to discipline him for spitting. The incident report states she then struck the child twice in the chest with a dustpan.

Thomas was arrested and charged with a felony count of unlawful neglect of a child. She turned herself in Friday morning, and was booked into the Myrtle Beach jail shortly afterward.

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How very horrible is this....

Briefly, it is a severely incapacitating life long developmental disorder that typically occurs in the first three years of life. It causes impairment or disturbance in three main areas Social skills, communicative (verbal as well as non-verbal) skills and in their repetitive and restricted behaviors. Autistic individuals may show abnormal responses to sensations. Any one or more of the senses may be affected. All these difficulties manifest themselves in behaviours i.e. abnormal ways of relating to people, objects and events in the environment.

What is Autism?

It has been my experience with these children that they feel everything and experience everything, perhaps more, they just can not communicate effectively if at all.

This woman was placed in CHARGE of this student so one must assume is knowledgeable of the condition. Taking that into account, I sincerely hope she gets some jail time..

Semper

As the father of a severely autistic son, I have just one thing to say...

... but I will remain silent due to not wanting to violate the TOS for the site and possibly call down LEO on my head.

Just despicable in every way.

Throw the book at her so hard she's seeing double for a year to come.

I read the story and there is absolutely no excuse. She knew what she was doing was wrong and she sat and thought about it enough to using just soap on her fingers. What a foolish, foolish woman. As much as the 'wash your mouth out with soap' threat is something many, if not all of us parents have likely said at one time or another, actually DOING it is quite another matter. Especially for someone who IS NOT the PARENT.

Not just for how times have changed and what was actually done at one time is, as the story indicates, a felony these days. It's also that the 'soap' my grandparents probably knew to have used on them as kids and used as parents in the 40's and 50's isn't the soap we have today. She could have killed the kid with all the crap and chemicals they pack into almost every soap/detergent on the market today.

Really, she has NO business ever being near a child without supervision again. She isn't just an ordinary adult losing her temper. It happens...and that's bad enough. She's been an professional educator at multiple other schools for many years. No excuses...IMO.

Someone has to stand for the victim who literally cannot even speak. (No one in the School apparently is, as I can almost hear the wagons circling from here)

totally inexcusable conduct on her part .. hope she gets jail time and her teaching certification revoked.
they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel to get teachers to end up with one to do something like that.. have to wonder what else she has done to students and not been caught for .. as doubt its first time she has abused a student ..

reply to post by Expat888

as doubt its first time she has abused a student ..

Exactly

How many other silent voices are out there that she has abused is a valid and compelling question