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Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School under construction in 2010.

(Diane Lederman)

NORTHAMPTON - The parents of a former Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School student are suing the school and its principal, claiming they violated their son's rights and caused him to suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for giving him in-house detention over a series of infractions he says he didn't commit.

Ellen Roy and Lyle Upright of Hadley maintain that their son, who was a 9-year-old third grader at the school at the time of the March 2011 detention, cried inconsolably afterwards, clung to his mother and asked her to explain why the school would treat him in such a way.

According to the complaint, which was filed Monday in Hampshire Superior Court, Principal Kathy Wang and teacher Regan Hall escorted the boy to a small detention room on March 25, 2011, "their hands on his back," and made him stay there for the duration of the school day. Hall is also named as a defendant in the suit. Wang had previously told Roy that the boy intimidated another student in the school rest room and poured water on a third student. The child denied both charges, saying the water incident was an accident.

Roy later learned that a teacher had also accused the boy of striking her daughter, who was a first-grader at the school. Roy's son denied this as well.

During a conference Wang called the student "bad boy" in his mother's presence and said the school would have notified police about his actions if he were older, according to the suit. Wang also reportedly told the boy his grandfather would have been ashamed of him. That evening, the boy was "extremely upset" and wanted to know if his grandfather still loved him, the suit states.

As a result of his detention, the boy missed lunch, recess, a classmate's birthday party and a party celebrating the end of MCAS testing, according to the suit. During detention, the boy was forced to write letters of apology to his alleged victims and had to be escorted to and from the rest room by faculty.

Traumatized by his detention, the boy left the Hadley school and began home-schooling, the suit states. It seeks damages for reckless infliction of emotional distress, negligence, breach of contract and violated the child's due process rights.

The school declined to comment on the matter.