Earlier this year, Millsap Independent School District in Parker County, Texas, faced a federal lawsuit after allegations surfaced that two staff members — special education teacher Jennifer Dale and paraprofessional Paxton Bean — abused special needs students. The pair have been charged with official oppression; Bean was also hit with an additional felony charge of injury to a child. Millsap ISD Superintendent Mari “Edie” Martin was charged with failure to report and intent to conceal the abuse allegations.
The lawsuit alleges that Dale and Bean physically abused special needs students, particularly a 10-year-old nonverbal autistic boy named Alex Cornelius. Video evidence shows Dale striking at Alex and Bean throwing an object at him, with additional claims of verbal and psychological abuse.
Martin is accused of attempting to cover up the abuse by failing to report it to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services or local law enforcement, as required by law. Martin also reportedly instructed a witness to destroy evidence.
Dale, Bean, and Martin were arrested, indicted, and fired from Millsap ISD. Three other educators, Jami Riggs, Jeannie Bottorff, and Shannon Krause, were also indicted on misdemeanor charges for failure to report child abuse by a professional.
When Sara Gonzales, BlazeTV host of “Come and Take It,” heard the story, all she could think was, “If this had happened to my kid, I would be in jail right now.”
Sara plays the video footage taken by a whistleblower in the classroom that led to the lawsuit. “You’re going to want to take your blood pressure medication for this one,” she warns.
In the video, Dale can be seen aggressively taking a swing at Alex. Seconds later, Alex walks over to Bean, who repeatedly hits him with a toy before throwing it at him.
Further, according to the witness who took the damning footage, Dale and Bean “committed mental and verbal abuse against special needs elementary students, which included taunting, mocking, threats, profanity, and extensive timeouts.”
According to the probable cause affidavit, Dale and Bean are accused of “locking children in unlit closets for extended periods of time, where they screamed for help and pleaded to be released; assaulting children with their hands and objects and using other forceful measures; and verbal assaults calling the children names, mocking their disabilities, and commenting about their genitals.”
“In one documented incident, one plaintiff’s child accused Bean of punching him in the face while confining him in a calm-down room, which resulted in the boy being taken to the school nurse with a ‘gushing nosebleed,”’ Sara reads.
But it gets worse.
“This story … it’s like an onion,” says Sara. “The more layers that you peel away from it, it’s like the grosser that it gets.”
For example, the witness took the video evidence straight to the superintendent because the elementary principal of the school where the abuse was taking place, Roxie Carter, happened to be Paxton Bean’s mother. Carter even wrote her daughter a letter of recommendation to help her get another teaching job while the investigation was still pending.
When Superintendent Martin received the evidence, however, she tried to “intimidate the whistleblower into deleting the video,” says Sara.
Recorded audio captures Martin saying, “I would like us to take them off your phone. Those are educational records, and I now have them and our investigator now has them, and they’re put in a safe file, but I don’t want you to walk off with those because those are educational records, OK? So we need to delete them from your phone. … If you keep them on your phone, your phone likely will be sanctioned for an investigation.”
“Any sort of big, bloated government bureaucracy with way too much money gets corrupted. There are no exceptions. Public school is not an exception,” says Sara, “and that is why you are left with superintendents who want to cover for the teachers rather than actually hold them accountable.”
To hear more of Sara’s commentary and more wild details about the scandal, watch the episode above.
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