Note: Here's another story of a poorly trained, poorly paid, poorly monitored mistake of an employee having direct contact with a person with autism. Joseph Jean-Felix cried that he "wasn't trained" properly and that's why he abused a pre-verbal teen boy on the bus.  Really?  If I didn't know how to care for, let's say, a ball python snake, but I was HIRED to care for a ball python snake, I wouldn't throw the snake out a second story window or crush it with a hammer if it slithered  and I did not know what to do. I would have asked for instructions. I would have asked my boss. I would have asked the snake owner. I would NOT have harmed the snake.

Ignorance is NEVER an excuse for harming our children. Jean-Felix hurt the boy because he is an impatient, cruel, frustrated, nasty, mean man who had no respect for the boy. 

My 19 year old daughter was abused on 2010 by HER bus monitor. A sweet,  young 20 something who twisted my daughter's hand and thumb causing her to cry out in agony on the bus tapes over and and over and over again.  She also received a suspended sentence and probation.

Our children will face harm until the day they die because the world is wholly unprepared for a generation of men and women with full autism and the behaviors that can include.  Heck, schools can not handle 6 year olds with severe aggressive behaviors.  We're on a slippery slope to hell on earth for them once we die and aren't here to try to protect them.

I have been in contact with the Father of this boy for several months.  Fairfield is the next town over from me. "Bruising and red marks," sounds far more benign than what really happened. I know his pain. And this suspended sentence and probation feels like a slap in the face. Because it is. Kim

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BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — A former Connecticut school bus monitor caught on surveillance video physically abusing a non-verbal autistic teenager has been given a suspended sentence.

Joseph Jean-Felix, 59, of Fairfield, received a five-year suspended sentence and three years of probation on Wednesday, the Connecticut Post reported.

Jean-Felix pleaded guilty to risk of injury to a child, third-degree assault and first-degree unlawful restraint.

The 15-year-old boy’s parents went to Fairfield police in December 2018 when their son came home from school with bruising and red marks on his wrists and arms. Read more here.