School staff deny assault allegations
TWO members of staff at a special school accused of ill-treating vulnerable pupils in their care have denied doing anything wrong.
Teacher Laura Murphy and teaching assistant Mandy Hodges are accused of physically and verbally assaulting three children at the Park Lane special school in Aberdare.
The school caters for pupils aged three to 19 who have a range of special educational and learning needs.
The incidents are said to have happened in October 2020 and involved three children, two of whom have severe autism.
Murphy and Hodges deny the charges, and are on trial at Swansea Crown Court.
Both defendants are accused, on separate occasions, of “ripping off” the ear defenders worn by a severely autistic boy who has a sensory processing disorder, thereby causing him distress – the child often wears the ear protection in noisy or crowded situations to help keep him calm.
Another incident is said to have happened when Murphy grabbed another boy and “marched” him across the school yard, while the third incident is said to have happened when Hodges removed a child from a trike, and then sat down on the bike herself.
Giving evidence in her defence, 33-year-old Murphy told the jury she had not been given the necessary training before being put in charge of a class of children with severe autism and sensory processing disorder.
She said despite raising her concerns with superiors, she was told she would have to take the class.
Murphy denied removing ear defendants from a boy as any form of punishment, saying she had seen other teachers at the school removing the headphones previous and was just copying what they done.
She also denied pushing away another boy, saying she moved the child’s arms because he was trying to hit her and bite her breasts.
Asked if she thought her actions had been “within permitted behaviour”, the witness said: “Yes. And within risk assessments”.
Asked if she ever wanted to harm the children, she replied: “No. Never.” Murphy denied shouting at a boy, saying she had been “talking firmly” to him after he had dug his nails into her hand.
When she gave evidence, teaching assistant Hodges – a former dinner lady at Treorchy Comprehensive School – denied she had sought to punish one of the children for hitting her by removing his ear defenders.
Hodges told the jury she believed the nine-year-old would “calm down” when his ear defenders were removed, adding she had seen other members of staff removing ear protectors lots of “times”.
She said the child did, in fact, subsequently calm down and he later came over to her was was “cwtching” her.
When prosecution barrister Emma Harris put it to the 50-year-old that removing ear defenders in the way she did was a “cruel way of punishing a child who did not know the difference between right and wrong” the witness said she would not do that, and she was not a cruel person.
Hodges also denied lifting a boy off his trike after the child had ridden into her leg.
She said the boy was “laughing” and seemed to think it was game, and she wanted to stop him riding the bike into her again or into pupils in the playground – she said she told him a number of times to stop before taking his hands off the handlebars and “guiding him” off the trike.
She told the jury she had subsequently sat on the trike herself because she has a bad back and cannot stand for extended periods. She denied goading or teasing the boy.
None of the children involved in the case can be named.
As part of the trial jurors have been shown CCTV footage of the alleged incidents from cameras in the school playground.
Hodges, of Pleasant Street, Pentre, Treorchy, and Murphy, of Gwendoline Terrace, Abercynon, face a total of seven charges of assault by of beating and of wilfully ill-treating a child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering, allegations they both deny. The trial continues.