Claims that staff at a Dunedin special needs school hit, sat on and force-fed children as young as five have led to three investigations - by police, an independent investigator and the Ministry of Education.
[...]
RNZ has been told there were 11 sworn affadavits from teachers and teacher aides about children being abused - including being hit, force-fed fruit, and having their wrists bent backward.
Another source said teaching staff had sat on children, pinched their nail cuticles, and tackled them to the ground.
Nearly all the eight or nine pupils of at the Sara Cohen junior class, aged between 5 and 10 and mostly with autism, are non-verbal.
Some were put in a seclusion room regularly, which appears to have been used for longer than two years.
This is just fucking wrong. The use of solitary confinement on adults has been found to be torture; its use on children is prohibited. The idea that a school, which is supposed to protect children, is intstead tortring them for its own convenience is simply monstrous. As for what we should do about it, we have a Crimes of Torture Act, and the police should use it.