ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 1996 TAG: 9610300046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
No one saw the slaps last March in a bathroom at William Byrd Middle School.
But at least three witnesses heard what they believed was hand against flesh. Then they heard the cries of a 14-year-old boy, unable to speak because he has cerebral palsy.
"I did hear what I thought was a slap," said school librarian Suzanne Sprenger, who was in an adjacent bathroom. "Then I heard the cry ... that sounded like a hurt."
John Peters, the boy's teaching assistant, admitted Tuesday at his assault trial that he hit the child, but described the blows as attention-getting taps rather than slaps of anger or frustration.
"I was more concerned with him wiping his feces on him," Peters testified in Roanoke County Juvenile Court. "I did tap him two times on the right buttocks. ... It was attention-getting."
Roanoke County Juvenile Court Judge Philip Trompeter did not agree. He convicted Peters of misdemeanor assault and battery and sentenced him to one month in jail.
"I could never excuse just because the job is hard that one is allowed to misstep or turn to violence," Trompeter told Peters. "That is essentially what you did."
School administrators testified that Peters was working with a student who could be cooperative one moment and difficult the next and had limited ability to communicate. But they called Peters' action "corporal punishment" and unacceptable.
Peters was released Tuesday after he posted $1,000 bond pending his appeal to Roanoke County Circuit Court.
Defense attorney Mac A. Chambers suggested in his closing argument that the teen-ager's habit of touching and pulling at his head may have caused the facial bruising that some witnesses said they saw after the incident but others did not. The slapping noise witnesses heard, Chambers added, could have been the boy's hands hitting the bathroom walls.
Peters testified that he took the boy to the single-room lavatory that March afternoon to clean up after the boy had soiled his pants. When the boy became fidgety, trying to touch his feces, Peters said, he hit him on the buttocks. The "taps" were "to keep him from undignifying [sic] himself, messing up his clothes and perhaps the wall."
Roanoke County school officials suspended Peters the day of the assault. He resigned shortly afterward, Chambers said.
Peters, a certified English teacher, did not have special training to work with handicapped students, according to court testimony. He had been assigned to work with the boy in September 1995.
A teacher had filed a complaint against Peters on at least one other occasion, Roanoke County Commonwealth's Attorney Skip Burkart said in court Tuesday. That complaint said Peters often used rough and foul language with the teen-ager.
The teen-ager's mother declined to comment outside of the courtroom Tuesday.
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