From time to time, my friends in the psychological
community point out to me that most of my columns pertain to law. Well, this one is going to be a hybrid
dealing with both legal and psychological issues. This is the story of Doug Shulby, Jr., a seventeen-year-old
student in Manhattan Beach who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. Someone with Asperger’s syndrome is, in
effect, unable to interpret social signals such as casual comments or facial
expressions that help people interact with each other. People with Asperger’s are often extremely
intelligent, yet they tend to fixate on a single, obscure subject, such as the
average amount of rainfall per year in every city in the country, or the number
of mosquito bites the average person receives on a given Sunday in August.
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District had
evaluated Doug six months before the incident that will be discussed
shortly. In the evaluation, school
psychiatrists concluded that if Doug acted inappropriately at school, employees
should let it go and address the issue sometime in the future. It is well known in the psychological
community that people who have Asperger’s syndrome suffer significant physical
and psychological damage from being physically restrained.
Flash back to December 8, 1998. On that date, Doug and a Manhattan Beach
School District employee got into a disagreement. Doug was standing outside a classroom waiting for his next class
to start when a district security officer asked Doug what he was doing in the
hall. When Doug told Security Officer
Ray Lee that he was waiting, Lee didn’t believe him, and became angry and
combative with Doug. Knowing things
could get bad, Doug tried to walk away and end the conversation. Unfortunately, Lee followed Doug and grabbed
him by the arm in an attempt to take him to the security office. Doug resisted Lee’s continual grabbing at
him, and was subsequently restrained by six district employees. Lee then contacted Christopher Vargas, a
Manhattan Beach Police officer who was on assignment at the high school. The officer handcuffed Doug and called
called the Manhattan Beach paramedics to take Doug to the hospital for a
psychological evaluation. Doug was then
transported to the hospital, and was situated in leather wrist and ankle
restraints for several hours. When
Doug’s mother arrived at the hospital, Doug was lying on a bed, still in
restraints, but too tired to resist.
Doug was unable to return to school. He felt humiliated and had continuous
nightmares which left him waking up screaming and crying. Doug’s mother, Sharon Shulby says that for a
while after this incident, she was afraid to leave her son alone, as he would
shift from extreme anger to withdrawal and back again. Mrs. Shulby feels she lost part of her son
that day.
Doug’s attorney has sued for negligence, false
imprisonment, and both negligent and intentional infliction of emotional
distress, claiming that the school violated its contract with Doug by
physically restraining him, when the school evaluation had specifically
indicated that was not the way to handle Doug if Doug began to act out.
Two years before this incident when he was fifteen,
Doug diagnosed himself with Asperger’s.
Doug’s self-diagnosis was later confirmed by a doctor. To give you a better feel for what Doug’s
life is like, he never understood the concept of homework, since he was doing
well at school. He would also interrupt
his teachers to correct their mistakes, as those with Asperger’s lack the
social skills which would allow them to raise their hands and be called
on. Many with Asperger’s are viewed as
rude, until it is understood that they cannot help themselves.
Because of the psychological evaluation done by the
school six months before this incident, I am on Doug’s side. The school was made aware of his condition,
he was given an extensive psychological evaluation, which specifically
indicated what should and should not be done if Doug were to start acting out,
and then what was in the report was either ignored by school personnel or not
all personnel were made aware of the report and of Doug’s condition. The purpose of the report was to prevent
exactly what happened from happening.
It’s not like the family snuck Doug into school and didn’t tell anyone
he had a psychological condition. The
family was up front about it, and the purpose of the psychological report was
to alert school employees as to how Doug needed to be treated. Doug suffered a lot on
December 8, 1998, and it was unnecessary. The school district needs to be held responsible for its
negligence and the damage done to Doug.