Some background.

In February, I first brought our story to the attention of this site when I wrote, Our Autistic Son was Handcuffed and Arrested in School, We Were Not Notified, in hopes of exposing the abuse that our son received at the hands of various authority figures.



In December, 2012, a teenager went to his public school, much like any other day. The boy was an autistic special education student, who is significantly learning disabled and on a regimen of prescription medications for a number of psychiatric disorders. That day, the boy's parents began to worry when he did not come home after school. What the parents did not know was that early on that morning, armed police officers had entered the boy's classroom, handcuffed him, and had taken him away to be interrogated without a call to his parents or any attorney, then locked up for several days. The boy is our son.

There were two components at play - the criminal and the educational.

On the criminal side, a judge ruled, in January, that our son's case will be dismissed after 6 months with no finding of guilt.

On the educational side, the district decided to move forward with an attempt to permanently expel our son from all of their district schools. We filed an expedited due process hearing to force the district to return our son to his school, which is what he strongly desired. There were two issues to be decided in the hearing, and the closing arguments were delivered on February 22.

In March, we received the judge's decision, and our son prevailed on both issues. One week later, he returned to his school.

You would hope that all would be swell at school after that, but sadly, it's not the case. While the teachers and students at our son's school have been wonderfully supportive, the administration is still messing with him. The most egregious examples are listed in the complaint, but for very good reasons we cannot state publicly at this time, though the need for silence on this is temporary.

So today here we are:



The claim, filed Friday, April 26, alleges Temecula Valley Unified School District officials, knowing that the teen suffers from disabilities and is in special education, authorized a drug sting that targeted and discriminated against him. District officials intentionally or negligently placed the teen in harm’s way, the claim states, “causing him to be entrapped, arrested, interrogated, incarcerated, prosecuted, and sustain significant emotional distress, physical injuries and severe anxiety.” [...] Doug Snodgrass, the teen’s father, said he wants to make sure a sting operation like that never happens again in Temecula. He added that he believes district officials have set a tone of hostility toward special education students. “We’d like to see change at the top of the administration,” he said.

For reference

Our Autistic Son was Handcuffed and Arrested in School, We Were Not Notified

Our Autistic Son's Arrest in the Press, YOU got the District's Attention, They Freak Out

Undercover deputy targeted mentally disabled teen, parents say

Our Autistic Son's Arrest: The Judge Has Ruled, VICTORY!!!