Principal, Teacher and Two Aides Arrested In Pahrump

From The Las Vegas Sun: "The Nye County Sheriff’s Office arrested four faculty members at Floyd Elementary School on Tuesday after a teacher and two aides were accused of physically punishing students with mental and physical disabilities, officials said.
Teacher Sarah Hopkins, 52, aides Phyllis DuShane, 73, and Kathryn Cummings, 56, and Principal Holly Lepisto, 53, were arrested Tuesday on five counts of child abuse/neglect and one count conspiracy to commit a crime, a Sheriff’s Office news release said.
According to the news release, detectives conducted an investigation at the school and found that Hopkins and the aides were using unreasonable physical punishment on children for at least the last two school years."
Four children were identified as victims; they had challenges that included visual impairment, cerebral palsy, speech challenges and hearing impairment, the release said.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/nov/23/four-nye-county-school-faculty-members-accused-chi/
Since there have been no details of what the employees did to hurt the students, I am going to withhold judgement.
But this reminds me of the time I worked at Vincent High School in the Milwaukee Public School District, in Wisconsin.
I was a rookie teacher, in the middle of my first year teaching. My classroom consisted of about 10 very severely disabled students, whose average mental age was about 4 months old. Over half the kids were in wheelchairs and none of the kids could talk.
One day, one of my students was crying and a teacher from another classroom happened to be in my classroom. He went up to the girl and slapped her in the face, quite hard and yelled at her to shut up- it wasn't a love tap. Needless to say, I was shocked at what I saw. The teacher said he was tired of hearing her cry.
After the shock wore off, I knew I had to report the incident. I contacted an assistant principal at the school who I knew and trusted and she had me write up a report. Then we went to the principal's office and I reported what I had seen. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened. There was no investigation by anyone in the school as to what happened.
So, then, I was pissed and then I found out that the principal and the abuser thug teacher were related through his marriage to a member of the principal's family.
Well, being thoroughly pissed off and more than a little scared, I went up the chain of command. I went to the area head of special education and reported what I saw. Still nothing happened. I then went to the head of Special Education in MPS. Still nothing happened. I finally went to the superintendent's office and talked to an assistant superintendent in the district and still nothing happened. The police were never called. Child protective services were never notified. No one from MPS ever questioned the teacher or any of the aides in the classroom about the episode and obviously, nothing ever happened to the teacher.
At the end of the school year, I was involuntarily transferred from Vincent H.S. to North Division H.S.. Gee, I wonder why. I'm actually surprised that I wasn't fired, but I guess they knew I could have raised a big stink if they fired me.
So, I can see how this could have happened in Pahrump. People see something and people can cover it up to protect their buddies. And in case, all of those arrested were fairly old and probably have been working together for a long time.
Again, I don't know the details of what happened in Pahrump, so I will reserve judgement, especially since this case comes from Nye County. This is where a lot of strange things happen, especially in the court system.