22 Trial Lawyer • Summer 2022 By Rebecca Cambreleng OTLA Guardian I first met Joyce Moore at the behest of the legendary Mark Morrell, where I acted as her advocate during a mediation. As is the norm during mediations, we had a lot of downtime during which we chatted about her case and about her as an individual. I remember being blown away by her big heart and her commitment to the children with special needs whom she had worked with for two decades. As we were chatting, Moore began to tell me about the physical violence she was experiencing while working as an educational assistant in her classroom. Her stories were matter of fact — telling me about the student that grabbed her breasts and twisted as hard as they could, or the student who decided to try and strangle her with the scarf she was Rebecca Cambreleng wearing one day. At first, I was unable to wrap my head around what I was hearing. The casual way she talked about the daily violence inflicted upon her, as if it was something to be expected of an employee of Portland Public Schools, was almost as mindboggling as the violence itself. I began to dig deeper, asking about what her employer had done to protect her, what the school had done to protect other students and generally the state of the classrooms she had been in. This woman was no stranger to difficult students. She had worked at Pioneer School for many years, a specialty school for students who were unable to be successful in a mainstream school classroom. In that setting, Moore was given enough training, support and safety gear to handle physical situations that arose. However, the toll it took on her both mentally and physically necessitated her transferring to a mainstream school classroom after eight years. Instead of alleviating the mental and physical strain, the move to Woodlawn Elementary School exacerbated the situation. There she and her co-workers were put in classrooms where the behaviors were the same as at Pioneer, but there was not proper training, support or safety gear. When Moore asked for help, tried to point out what they needed to help these children, she was ignored by PPS. They left her, and all the other teachers and educational assistants, to deal with it as best they could. More educators follow Theresa Demma had been a special education teacher in inner-city Chicago for six of her twenty-six years in special education. It took two years at PPS to break her. I met Demma after I filed suit on behalf of Moore and her co-worker, and the case was picked up by The Oregonian. I began receiving calls daily from teachers, educational assistants and staff from schools all over Oregon who finally felt like someone was hearing their pleas for help and would protect them, as their employers had not. Demma had been promised a run-ofthe-mill social emotional skills classroom at Sabin Elementary School. The school failed to provide her with any curriculum, protective gear, trained staff or even a functional behavior assessment despite being in self-contained classrooms for over two years. Demma was punched in the chest, bitten, spit on, scratched hard enough to draw blood and kicked in the head. The latter resulted in a torn retina. From a male classroom employee at Beaverton who was digitally anally raped by an 18-year-old student, to a teacher in Salem who was kicked so hard in the kidney she involuntarily wet herself, educators across the state were all telling the same story. Employers who failed to protect their employees from physical Violence in the Classroom
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Nzc3ODM=