The safety of autistic children travelling on school buses has again been brought into question after a three-year-old boy was left on a vehicle for five hours.
Mason Davidson-James, who has autism and is unable to speak, was left strapped into a 12-seater minibus.
His carers are said to have forgotten to escort him into his class at Castle Wood School in Coventry, which caters for children with special needs. He was discovered on the bus at a depot when another driver was setting off to collect children from school.
The incident is the latest in a series concerning children with autism being left on school buses. In the summer of 2010, a driver and bus monitor were charged for child neglect for leaving an autistic boy on a school bus in Richmond, Virginia, in the United States.
In a case that mirrors that of Mason’s, the five-year-old boy was discovered by another driver at the city’s school bus depot when he heard the child cry. The boy had been left on the bus for an hour in high temperatures with the windows closed.
In 2009, six-year-old Chicago-based Connor Donovan, who has autism, was found wandering alone outside his school three hours after he was due to enrol on his first day.
Parents in the United States have turned to the courts to seek justice after their children have suffered neglect of this kind. Some of the children have been left with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The parents of nine-year-old Tyler Mellito, left for more than four hours on a school bus, filed a lawsuit against their district’s board of education, the bus driver and the aides. The suit claimed that as a result of his ordeal, Tyler has suffered mental anguish requiring medical attention.
Speaking from her home in Coventry, Mason’s mother Rebekah said of her son’s ordeal: “He could have died. He had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and it was freezing cold.”
Yvonne McCall, head teacher of Castle Wood School, where Mason is one of 112 pupils, refused to go into detail about the incident beyond saying that it was being investigated by Coventry Council. McCall told Autism Eye that the school had followed proper procedures when it was alerted to the fact that Mason was not in school.
Mason’s mother is reported to have learned about her son’s plight when a school governor brought him home at 2pm.
Published: 8 November 2010
