Young Special-needs Child Suspended for Drawing Jesus

T’is the Season. Not quite Rhode Island, but certainly close enough to us to hit home…

An 8-year-old special-needs child was suspended from school and forced to undergo psychiatric counseling over a picture he drew of Jesus Christ dead on the cross for a Christmas assignment.

School officials in Taunton, Mass., said the picture “violated the code of violence in the school handbook,” said Toni Saunders, an educational consultant on special-needs children with the Associated Advocacy Center who is working with the boy’s family.

“I couldn’t believe what they were telling me,” the boy’s father, Chester Johnson, who also works for the school system as a substitute custodian, told The Washington Times on Tuesday. “I asked her, ‘Are you fooling around?’”

Mr. Johnson said his son, who is a slow reader and has “a little speech problem,” now wants to transfer schools. Mr. Johnson requested that his son not be named.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ms. Saunders added, referring to the suspension. “This is a very religious family. They felt violated because of this.”

The fracas began Thanksgiving night, when the boy was taken to see a Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, Mass. The next week, on Dec. 2, the boy’s teacher at Lowell M. Maxham Elementary School asked all the students to draw something that reminded them of Christmas, and the pupil drew a crucifix like the one he had seen at the display.

The boy then was taken to the principal’s office and asked why he drew this image.

Read More: The Washington Times