A New York mother, Christine Henson, is outraged after discovering that her 12-year-old daughter, Faith, was handcuffed to a chair at IS 584 in the South Bronx following a fight with another student.
Henson, 46, went to pick up her daughter on November 19 but found that Faith was missing. However, she was shocked to find her daughter handcuffed to a chair in a room inside the school on Saint Ann’s Avenue. School officials led Henson to the room where she made the distressing discovery.
The frustrated mother told Daily News: “My daughter was treated like a criminal. She was really violated. It doesn’t make sense.”
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Faith, who had been involved in a fight with another student, was struggling and panicked with her arms cuffed behind her back. She informed her mother that she had been restrained for three hours.
The mother recalled: “I asked the school safety officer, ‘Why is she in handcuffs? Can you please take those off of her?’ [The school safety agent] said ‘She’s not going anywhere.”’
Henson claimed she was not informed about why her daughter, Faith, was handcuffed at IS 584 in the South Bronx after a fight.
When Henson arrived at the school, the school safety agent allegedly blocked her from approaching Faith and said the police needed to come to unlock the handcuffs.
However, when six officers arrived, Henson discovered that the safety agent had the key to release her daughter’s restraints. The NYPD later stated that Faith had been handcuffed due to her increasing agitation following the altercation.
The department wrote: “The School Safety agent attempted to place the student in Velcro handcuffs, the student was not compliant, and the School Safety Agent was unable to place her in the Velcro handcuffs.
“The student was then restrained using metal handcuffs.”
Police stated that Henson was handcuffed for approximately 15 minutes, not the three hours her mother initially claimed.
However, child and civil rights advocates argue that the use of handcuffs was both unnecessary and unacceptable, regardless of the duration of the restraint.
“If there is no immediate threat, these students should be receiving support. Situations can be de-escalated in ways that don’t require restraints,” Rohini Singh, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children, told Daily News.
Rev. Kevin McCall echoed this sentiment, telling the outlet: “You send your child to school to learn enough, not to be placed in handcuffs. We don’t need the police inside our schools.”
Faith said she was completely confused and shocked when school safety agents restrained her. She did not expect the action, and was caught off guard by the incident.
She told Daily News: “It was just out of nowhere.
“They did it sneakily. I was confused on why they did it. It felt terrible. It didn’t feel right. They just did it. They didn’t say why. Now my wrist hurts.”
Following the handcuffing incident at her Bronx school, Faith was taken to urgent care by her mother. Although Faith hasn’t been penalized at school, the traumatic event has left her shaken, and she now wishes to transfer to a different school.
“I feel frightened, I don’t even want to go to class,” she said.
Henson requested an immediate transfer for her daughter, Faith, on November 22 after the handcuffing incident at her Bronx school.
Initially, she was told the transfer couldn’t be filed on the day of the incident and that the earliest Faith could switch schools would be the following fall. However, after the situation gained wider attention, the school offered to transfer Faith sooner.
“School and district leadership is reaching out to this family to ensure they have the supports they need, and mental health and emotional supports are available at every school,” public schools spokesperson Jenna Lyle told Daily News.
“We are taking steps to ensure that these resources are known to this student.”
Henson wants to sue the school over this incident.
“The school just glossed it over and expected me to bypass it as if nothing occurred. They want this to disappear,’ she said.
