The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 4

The Morning News, Wilmington, Monday, July 23, 1979 A day at Au Clair: Is the state meddling in miracles? Former staff members have said that often only two people were left with 30 children for the evening shift, and that one person was then left alone with the children all night. Mazik said it was only for a short time that only one person was with the children.following a court order that he not be at the school at night until the divorce settlement with his wife was final. Mazik had to hire more staffers to get his license. dthe use of new programs. The said his claims of music, dance and recreational therapy programs are false, even though Mazik has page after page of reports to show that such programs for each child do exist.

The school is required by each state to fill out forms called Individual Education Programs for each child. Former staff members have said the forms grossly exaggerate what the school offers. The report pointed out that in many instances the school "misrepresented itself to the public in describing the services which it provides." But Robert L. Felont of Maryland describes the Au Clair school as "one of the schools I have the most confidence in." Felton is the teacher specialist in the placement unit for the Montgomery County Public Schools in Rockvllle, Md. He works with 26 schools on the East Coast that deal with autistic or retarded children, and he said nine or 10 children from Maryland are at Au Clair.

Felton said he had not made an unannounced visit to the school. Unnannounced visits are not allowed at Au Clair, Mazik has said, because they interrupt the therapy programs and the children's schedules. Richman said that one of the things that bothered him about the report is that "the august individuals who made it should have contacted the individuals who know the most about it." he said. "It is a faux pas on their part not to contact the parents." he continued. Alfred and Josey Traum of Silver Spring, who have a 20-year-old son at Au Clair, agreed.

"If there are abuses, obviously we are concerned for our child and anyone's child. But I can't overlook the fact that we have seen the pro gram and seen some children changed from animals," Traum said. "It simply is the end of a long search for us, up and down the country. This is the best we have found. And we feel our son has a future now." Said another mother from.

New Jersey: "Even after the report was read to me, I was positive. Either we are incredibly naive, or we don't know something." Tomorrow: Into the winner's circle with Ken and Claire Mazik. absolutely cruel and unwarranted punishment," he said. "These are human beings, don't you think? What child would be normal if he has had these things you say done to him?" DesLauriers says painful aversives are no longer thought to be beneficial therapy for autistic children. "Even the original proponents of that have faded," he said.

He said children quite often would reach a plateau in their programs, as several parents at Au Clair said they had experienced with their own child. But DesLauriers said it was up to the staff to be creative and find programs that would get the child out of his slump. Gary W. Laviga agreed with DesLauriers that today the field of behavior modifiction is beginning to shy away from the traditional use of aversive procedures. As chairman of the professional advisory board for the National Society for Autistic Children, Lavigna is helping revise the "White Papers" on behavior modification for autistic children, standards the board adopted in June 1975 as guidelines in this area.

"What we will be calling for are strict guidelines in using aversives," said Lavigna recently from his office in Newhall, where he is director of a treatment program for autistic children. "The procedures do lend themselves to misuse." He said he tends not to use aversives at all. Amy L. Lettick, director of Ben-haven Inc. in New Haven, quickly voices her support for a strict policy on the use of punishment.

She advocates parental involvement and has a human rights committee review her school for 40 autistic children to make sure the interests of the children are served. Each student at Benhaven, she said, has an adult advocate and has a report done on his progress every four months. She said there were four teachers for every two students, and the more difficult students have one teacher with them constantly. Mazik said he would love to have one teacher for each child, But-pointed out the cost of that luxury. Benhaven, Ms.

Lettick said, will cost $33,000 per resident next year. Au Clair costs $18,000 a year. For the 30 Au Clair students, Mazik said he has eight full-time staffers on the day shift, and since the state's report in June, he has hired eight more staffers for the three shifts. Continued from Pane 0n the report was made by bureaucratic officials who could not accurately access some of the procedures used at the school. "I got the feeling from the letter that Delaware is trying to impose standards on the school, hard fast rules that don't apply here," said Milton Saul, a parent of a 24-year-old Au Clair student he described as mongoloid, autistic and epileptic.

Saul told how Mazik found his son in another institution, crouching in the corner of a bathroom and covering his naked body with feces. He said that often he would go to the other institutions and see great bruises on his son's back, or find it raw from beatings. "That has never happened here," said Saul, who is moving from Stanton Island, N.Y., to Middletown. His son has been at Au Clair for 10 years, he said, and before no one could reach him. "Now he is learning responses.

He is learning to communicate," he said. When asked to describe Mazik, Saul called him a "mad genius." Sheridan L. Neimark, past director of the National Society of Autistic Children and now a lawyer for the society in Washington, D.C., also has a son at Au Clair. His 15-year-old son had been in eight different programs before he was placed at Au Clair, and "has made more progress here than anywhere else," Neimark said. Neimark's son, described by his parents and staff members as very self-abusive, was placed on a table top last year with his hands and his feet bound by rope.

Left unsupervised, he fell off and broke his collar bone. Neimark knew of the incident, but he said he did not recall that his son was tied up. "But if something like that happened, I would not be upset. It sounds a lot worse than it is," he said. Other parents shared Neimark's views, and felt that the state's report would cause trouble in their home states.

The 30 students at the school are from New Jersey, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts. The states provide subsidies for out-of-state placements for autistic children. No children at the school are from Delaware. Many parents refused to believe that their children could be abused at Au Clair. "If they were abused we would know it." said another mother from New Jersey.

"We feel we know our kids like the insides of A tvpical dav at Au Clair begins at 8:30 a.m.fhe three girls and 27 boys have been sleeping in bunk beds on the second and third floors of the Mazik's 28-room house. They are up, dressed, and finished with breakfast by 9:30 a.m. when their first therapy session begins. The children are divided into groups according to their learning abilities, not their age. The six-year-old student who is learning what "sit down" or "stand up" commands mean may be sitting beside a 17-year-old blond who continuously rolls her head from side to side, echoing whatever you say to her.

She is ecolalic, a term used to describe an autistic child who -epeats what is said to her. The "big boys" are learning to write. There are language, math, and other books on the shelves in the room where the most advanced students work. The sessions continue until about 11:30 a.m. The students sit five or six to a group at a table shaped liked a horseshoe, with the teacher in the middle.

Each student gets special attention for about 20 minutes; the others must sit quietly, their hands folded on the desk top in front of them, as theywait their turn. Often a child can't sit still, and he will begin what the teachers call "gooning," or unacceptable behavior. He may wiggle his fingers in front of his face, start rocking back and forth, or begin a low, soft gurgle in his throat that becomes a series of click-click-clicks and eventually, perhaps, a loud scream. A loud "No!" screamed at the child may stop this behavior. It is the same "No!" shouted to the child who, when the teacher says cup, picks out the pencil instead of that white thing with the hole in the hole in the top.

But if the "No!" isn't enough, the child may begin to lose control. His eyes may roll. The scream gets louder. And if nothing is done to help him stop, the child will be gone. Theresa Belfiore described what it's like to see her child Nicholas lose it.

"He gets confused, and he just starts rocking and rocking on the floor. One time we were sitting there looking at him, and this kid. this same kid who can't really understand questions, starts yelling, 'Why are you looking at me'' Why are you looking at I told the other kids, 'Don't look at 'Nicky, no one's looking at "Sometimes he tells me to sit on him. When he begins to lose it, he starts making like he screws his fists into his cheeks and grinds and grinds. If I sit on him and hold his arms back, he's OK." Imagine me," said the slender woman from Cherry Hill, N.J., "sitting on this kid they call the 'Italian My other son helps me.

And when it's over, it's beautiful. After 15 minutes of screaming, he's sweating all over and it's beautiful. Calm. Just beautiful." Students who "lose it" at Au Clair are sat on, too. And they receive slaps to the face, spanks on the buttocks or have water sprayed into their faces or poured from a glass or pitcher into their eyes.

The teachers trying to keep the child from hurting himself or others may grab the back of his collar and push him to the floor and straddle his chest. These procedures were documented in the state's report and included in a review of the school done last April by three out-of-state experts who visited Au Clair at the state's request. The report did not say which procedures should and should not be used. It did. however, sharply reprimand the school for not having an individual treatment or therapy plan for each child that states which punishments will be used for him and under what conditions.

The report stated that painful punishment should be used only as a last resort, when all other procedures have been documented and have failed. The state reported that at Au Clair some of the punishments that had been used involved blows to the head. Former staff employees have said that a riding crop, a plastic whiffle bat and striking the child with an open hand were often used to discipline the chilren. The report pointed out that painful aversives should only be used as a last resort. When told of the incident in which a child with a rope tied around his ON US CALL NOW! 737-6877 Kirkwoocl Highway (Dual Facility) waist was repeatedly thrown into a dirty swimming pool, Neimark said: "My initial impression? 'My God.

That's But it's very easy to judge something like that at first. You don't stop to think that they are trying to train a person to live in society." Mazik has said that the report exaggerated the use of aversives at the school, and that it made even the accepted punishments used sound harmful. Before Mazik can get a license for the school, he must draw up a treatment plan for each child that includes what punishments are suited for him and under what circumstances. Mazik must also make sure the parents and an advisory group which he must establish for the school know what punishments are used. Many parents said that although they do not sign consent forms now, they are aware of their of their child's program.

"You've got a therapy that works here," said David H.H. Diamond of Gaithersville, who has a 13-year-old son at Au Clair. "Aversive therapy is the only thing that keeps him under control." Diamond remembers coming to Au Clair the first time eight years ago and being told by Mazik that his son could be educated. When Mazik's therapy began to work, "my initial response was that this was absolutely stupendous," said Diamond in his native English clip. "We almost died.

For the first time in his life ever, he sat still. We were just amazed." "If the school closed down because it's not perfect, where are they going to go?" another parent said. Only one of the 13 parents interviewed expressed dismay at the stories of children being dunked in swimming pools and beaten with a riding crop. He said he considered such therapy "sadistic." But he and others parents agreed that at one point after their chilren had been at the school for a couple of years they had stopped learning. "He seemed to reach a plateau, and made no progress," one said of his child.

Another said, however, that he was scared to question Mazik too much. And often, when he was disappointed with the school, Mazik would show signs that he was not giving up on the child and try a new approach. But as one said, "I couldn't complain too loudly. There is a supply and demand problem for these schools. In this case, Mazik can throw my kid out on a whimsy." Dr.

Austin M. DesLauriers believes first that children are human beings. The procedures former staff members said they witnessed at Au Clair are appalling, says the clinical director for the center for autistic children at the Devereux Foundation in Bryn Mawr, Pa. "Beating a child with an instrument, dunking his head in water is Job troubles cited ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -Hispanic Americans continue to have trouble finding jobs and are among the lowest paid of all ethnic groups, according to Tom Robles, Albuquerque district director of the Equal employment opportunity Commission.

Robles says Hispanics since 1964 have shown an increase of only 1.8 percent in the number of jobs in private industry. 459-5150 Rt. 202 at Pa. State Line (Dual Facility) The day continues. At 11:30 a.m.

the chilren eat lunch. Then they go to the bathroom, take their medication and play until 1:15 p.m., when it's time for their afternoon therapy sessions. For the "big boys," the afternoon means vocational training. Marcia Suojanen, a teacher at the school, began a program in September to teach students to be stable attendants or groomsmen. They learn to clean the stalls and the horses, feed the horses.

Soon, Ms. Suojanen said, she would like for them to learn to ride, too. Mazik said he started the program because states that place children in Au Clair wanted them to receive training anddevelop a skill as they grew older. The vocational horse program fills that bill, he said. At 3:30 p.m., the therapy sessions end and the children eat dinner.

At 4:30, therapy sessions begin again, and go until 7:30 p.m. every night except Wednesday and baths are given. The night sessions include reviews of what was learned during the day, boy scout programs for the big boys, printing, music and recreation. By 9:00 p.m. everyone is in bed.

Except for days when there are field trips, the schedule remains the same. The children go home for four weeks each year and occasionally on weekends. The former staff members claim that the therapy sessions and the eduation program are blown out of proportion. They laugh at descriptions for the school in federal directories that claim the school has tennis and basketball courts, two swimming pools, two speech and hearing specialists, a language development therapist and other professionals.They say the school had none of those things when they worked there. They said Mazik often discourage- FIRST 4 Astataiioii no counting ENJOY A FREE 3 WEEK VACATION Take advantage of our limited offer and enjoy our outstanding health facilities for a 3-week period FREE.

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