Advertisement

Hernando district investigating teacher, aide in physical abuse case

 
Published May 11, 2016

BROOKSVILLE — Adding to the troubles at Moton Elementary School, the Hernando County School District is investigating whether two employees physically abused a 6-year-old student with Down syndrome.

The employees — whom the girl's mother identified as a teacher and a teacher's aide — have been removed from contact with students, said district spokeswoman Karen Jordan.

The girl's mother, Vanessa Mauk-Doane, said an investigator from the Florida Department of Children and Families told the family that other teachers had reported seeing the teacher and teacher's aide drag Mauk-Doane's daughter across the floor by her hair.

Mauk-Doane said she was disturbed that she heard about the incidents — one of which happened on April 29 and the other several days earlier — not from the school, but from a DCF investigator who talked to the girl's father on April 30.

"I am outraged that I wasn't notified the first time it happened, the second time it happened, or at all," Mauk-Doane wrote in an email to the Tampa Bay Times.

Because her daughter has limited speech capacity, Mauk-Doane said, she worries that the teacher and aide in her daughter's exceptional student kindergarten class may have previously abused her.

"I don't know how many times this could have happened," she wrote in the email.

Jordan said the district did not tell the family because, after reporting it to the DCF, they were told the department would contact the family the next day.

Mauk-Doane said the Hernando County Sheriff's Office is also investigating the abuse allegations, which spokeswoman Denise Moloney confirmed.

Moton principal Mark Griffith and assistant principal Anna Jensen were previously transferred out of the school as the district investigates allegations of cheating on standardized tests.

Contact Dan DeWitt at ddewitt@tampabay.com; follow @ddewitttimes.