A mother who claims her son with autism was physically abused at his residential school is petitioning for staff to wear cameras in care settings to protect the vulnerable. Leanne Batey, 40, based in Bexleyheath, south-east London, enrolled her son, Jack, 16, who has autism and severe learning difficulties, into a residential special education school located in Kent, which cannot be named for legal reasons, in September 2021 to give him a better day-to-day experience.
While Leanne said his first year at the school went positively, she noticed changes “overnight” in his second year where she claims she noticed “scratches” and “bruises” on his body when she would visit him, and he “stopped going off-site regularly”. When Jack began to “hit himself right on the top of his head” and use phrases such as “stop f****** misbehaving”, Leanne and her husband, Michael, 45, felt something was seriously wrong, as she said her son does not take on new behaviours or vocabulary unless they are shown or told to him first.
They conducted their own investigations at home using cards with words and images to allow Jack to paint a picture of the physical abuse they suspect he was subject to, with Leanne saying she is “heart-broken” and “scarred” thinking about what her son may have endured. Jack was removed from the school in November 2023 and started at another day school in April 2024, although Leanne said she now does not “trust” anyone to look after him and Jack will “re-enact the abuse” to see if he is “safe” around new people.
Leanne launched a Change.org petition in November 2024 calling for Jack’s Law, which seeks to mandate body-worn cameras for staff in residential special education schools and in care homes, gaining more than 27,000 signatures so far. “With the behaviours he presents and how traumatised he is now, my child was abused at that school and they know it,” Leanne, who is her son’s full-time carer, told PA Real Life.
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“I rang my son every day, I spoke to him on video calls three times a week, I visited him once a week, he came home for half-terms – and it still happened to my child. It’s heart-breaking, absolutely heart-breaking and the guilt you feel, you can’t describe.”
Jack was diagnosed with autism in 2010 when he was two years old. He attended three different day schools throughout his childhood, but when he was 13 Leanne felt a residential special education school could be a positive change.
Jack started attending a school located in Kent and Leanne said his first year went very well. “I just simply could not replicate what he was getting in a residential setting, it really did seem like the ideal thing to do,” she said.
Leanne felt the atmosphere shifted as Jack entered his second year, however. “From Jack’s perspective, overnight he just stopped regularly going off-site – all of a sudden he would only go out into the community if I took him,” she said.
She said she also noticed Jack had “scratches”, “bruises” and “marks” on his body when she would visit him at weekends – and while she felt some could be caused by Jack playing around, they made her feel “concerned”. Leanne said she reported this to the school but claims she was “gaslighted”.
“I was told by the school that this was my problem, that I was just missing my son and perhaps I needed to get some counselling,” she said. “I ended up arguing against my own mother’s instinct that something was wrong.”
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When Jack returned home for Christmas in December 2022, Leanne said he began to “hit himself right on the top of his head” – a behaviour she said he had never exhibited before. She said this continued over the next few months when, in May 2023, Jack began to hit himself on the head while saying the name of two staff members from the school.
Leanne said she reported the incident to the school “immediately” and she grew very concerned as to what it could mean. She decided to keep Jack away from the school for a month while the facility organised an independent investigation into the incident – with Leanne claiming the report came back as “unsubstantiated”.
“It felt like a box-ticking exercise,” she said. “You know your own child, he’s not able to make up stories, he’s got no imagination – so where does he get it from? Unless it has happened, he’s not going to speak about it.”
To try and provide further evidence, Leanne decided to conduct a study of her own with her son. She presented him with a multitude of colourful cards with different objects, emotions and the names of people in his life to allow him to create his own story.
“Every time he told me the same thing,” she said. “He picked the symbol for a staff member at the school and a punch in the head symbol. For another staff member, he kept picking a picture of a water bottle.”
Leanne said her husband gave Jack a water bottle and they asked him what happened before he started “smacking himself over the head with it”. She added that, over time, Jack “fed” them more information.
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“He would grab our wrists and say ‘do that again’ in an aggressive tone,” she said. “One day, he was sat in the back of the car and he started to really hit himself on the top of his head and he said ‘stop f****** misbehaving’ – I asked him who said that and he gave me the name of a staff member.
“If we walked into his room too quickly, he would put his hands over his head and flinch.” Leanne reported the additional information to the school but claims they have told her it is not substantial proof of abuse.
“I’ve asked a million times if he doesn’t mean abuse, what does he mean?,” she said. “Nobody will answer me.”
Jack became a day student at the school from June 2023 before Leanne took him out altogether at the start of November 2023 after he became “distressed” about attending. He started a new day school in April 2024.
“The whole experience has completely scarred me, it’s completely limited my choices for Jack because I do not trust people to look after him,” Leanne said. She added Jack will now re-enact the physical abuse she suspects he was subject to.
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“They (have) given him this extra layer of issue which is this trauma he suffers with that he can receive no therapy for,” she said. “He now re-enacts the abuse with new people to see what they will do back to know if he’s safe.
“We’re not just dealing with his behaviours through his autism now, we’re dealing with these behaviours because of abuse.” Leanne launched a Change.org petition in November 2024 calling for Jack’s Law, which aims to mandate wearable cameras for staff in residential special education schools and in care homes.
“I wanted to bring something good out of what happened to Jack,” she said. “If you think something has happened, you can’t prove it and it’s just so easy to get away with abuse.”
The relevant local authority for the school said: “We take the care of all children in schools extremely seriously and work with school staff to ensure any complaints or allegations are investigated thoroughly.
“In this case, an internal and external investigation was undertaken to review allegations and there were no findings of abuse or injuries to the child. The school put measures in place to safeguard and prevent the child from leaving the school premises unsupervised.”
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