TORONTO – A special education teacher from Georgia, who is accused of holding an autistic second-grader upside down in a trash can and comparing his behaviour to Oscar the Grouch, said in her defence she was only trying to calm the child.
Mary Katherine Pursley, a teacher from Marietta, Ga. near Atlanta, told a school tribunal hearing Monday that the child was screaming and upset and she was attempting to get him to stop by “shaking out the grouchy,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
“My intention was not to put him all the way in the can,” Pursley told a panel of former educators at the hearing. “I was sort of shaking him over the trash can.”
The incident, which occurred April 30, is being reviewed by the school district that will decide Friday if Pursley will be dismissed from her job with Cobb County Schools. She has been a teacher with the district for 21 years and has been on paid administrative leave.
According The Atlanta Journal, Pursley allegedly picked up the child by his legs and held him upside down before putting his head into a trash can and making allusions to Oscar the Grouch of the popular kids show Sesame Street.
“The accused told the victim, ‘If he had trashy behavior like Oscar, he’d go to the trash can’,” according to an arrest warrant for Pursley.
Police charged the teacher with a felony charge of first-degree cruelty to children.
Pursley’s lawyer reportedly said the teachers’ actions were not inappropriate as she had previously used characters, like Oscar the Grouch, to help calm special education students.
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