Hidden Cam Shows Teacher Putting Young Children In A Solitary Confinement Cell For Timeout

Parents were shocked when they obtained a video from their 's Illinois school showing him detained inside a window-less, cell-like 'seclusion room' used for timeouts.



Staley Sandy-Ester is seen in the April 30 footage at the Gages Lake School, a therapeutic, public school in Lake County.



The video triggered a massive state investigation into the controversial practice.



The boy appears upset and is prevented from leaving the room by a female school aide. When Staley, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, kicks the woman, she grabs and shoves him.



He later learned of the incident when Staley came home and complained of a scary office at school, reports ProPublica Illinois.



The didn't know what he meant until she saw the footage a month later, a Pro Publica and Chicago Tribune investigation found.



That's when the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services began investigating whether kids were being abused in 'the office', as the room is called at Gages Lake.



Public schools in Illinois have historically placed disruptive and disabled children as young as five years old into isolated seclusion rooms, where they scratch windows, bang their heads against the walls, urinate, defecate, and remove their clothing while begging to be let out, according to ProPublica and the Tribune's findings.



There were more than 20,000 documented incidents in which students were placed inside locked rooms for isolated timeouts in the 2017-2018 school year alone.



Of those, about 12,000 were described in detail that included the reason the children were placed in timeout.