Psych Ward for a Creative Writer
I'm going to let this story speak for itself:
---------------------------------
Family sues after creative writing assignment lands teen in psych ward By Lisa Sweetingham, Court TV
(Court TV) — Minnesota high school student David Riehm bristled at his creative writing teacher's stinging comments at the bottom of his assignment.
"David, I am offended by this piece. If this needs to be your subject matter, you're going to have to find another teacher," Ann Mershon's critique began.
The 17-year-old's satirical fable concerned a boy who awoke from a wet dream, slipped rear-end first onto a toy cone, and then had his head crushed "in a misty red explosion" under the tires of a school bus.
"I'm actually a little concerned about your obsessive focus on sex and potty language. Make a change — today!" Mershon warned.
David did not make a change. The poetry, scripts and songs he loved to write typically earned him praise from friends and family. Mershon's rebuke only roused him to rebel against her in two more essays over the course of the term.
"Bowling for Cuntcheson," a vivid dream-within-a-dream about a boy who finds a gun under a church pew and shoots his teacher, "Mrs. Cuntcheson," so frightened Mershon that she alerted the school administration.
"I felt threatened and violated by this thinly veiled fictional account of revenge against me," Mershon wrote in a statement to authorities. "I immediately had anxieties, which I have struggled with since reading the story. It scared me, it hurt me, and it also makes me very concerned for David."
David was suspended on Jan. 24, 2005. The next night, three men — a Cook County deputy sheriff, a state trooper and a social worker — showed up at Colleen Riehm's home on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation with a court order to seize her son and commit him to a psychiatric ward 150 miles away in Duluth. (David's stepfather is Native American, but David is not enrolled in any tribe.)
With no room at the juvenile facility, David was temporarily placed in the adult unit.
"He was scared to death," David's attorney told Courttv.com. "He didn't know what was going to happen from one minute to the next."
A physician later determined David was neither mentally ill nor dangerous, and more than 100 letters of support, written by classmates, faculty and parents, were presented at a court hearing, his attorney said.
David was ordered released from the hospital 72 hours after he had been taken into custody. His mother received $6,000 in medical bills.
Colleen and David Riehm filed a civil suit last month against his former teacher, the principal, and other county officials alleging numerous violations of David's constitutional rights, including freedom of speech, due process, and protection from unreasonable seizure, false imprisonment, and negligent confinement.
"Throwing a kid into a mental hospital for what he writes and not for what he does is unconscionable and unacceptable," Riehm's attorney Peter Nickitas told Courttv.com. "I would expect to see something like this in a book by George Orwell or Franz Kafka or an excerpt from the 'Gulag Archipelago,' but this happened in Minnesota in 2005."
It has also happened in Texas, Kansas, Louisiana and public schools across the nation. link
---------------------------------
Family sues after creative writing assignment lands teen in psych ward By Lisa Sweetingham, Court TV
(Court TV) — Minnesota high school student David Riehm bristled at his creative writing teacher's stinging comments at the bottom of his assignment.
"David, I am offended by this piece. If this needs to be your subject matter, you're going to have to find another teacher," Ann Mershon's critique began.
The 17-year-old's satirical fable concerned a boy who awoke from a wet dream, slipped rear-end first onto a toy cone, and then had his head crushed "in a misty red explosion" under the tires of a school bus.
"I'm actually a little concerned about your obsessive focus on sex and potty language. Make a change — today!" Mershon warned.
David did not make a change. The poetry, scripts and songs he loved to write typically earned him praise from friends and family. Mershon's rebuke only roused him to rebel against her in two more essays over the course of the term.
"Bowling for Cuntcheson," a vivid dream-within-a-dream about a boy who finds a gun under a church pew and shoots his teacher, "Mrs. Cuntcheson," so frightened Mershon that she alerted the school administration.
"I felt threatened and violated by this thinly veiled fictional account of revenge against me," Mershon wrote in a statement to authorities. "I immediately had anxieties, which I have struggled with since reading the story. It scared me, it hurt me, and it also makes me very concerned for David."
David was suspended on Jan. 24, 2005. The next night, three men — a Cook County deputy sheriff, a state trooper and a social worker — showed up at Colleen Riehm's home on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation with a court order to seize her son and commit him to a psychiatric ward 150 miles away in Duluth. (David's stepfather is Native American, but David is not enrolled in any tribe.)
With no room at the juvenile facility, David was temporarily placed in the adult unit.
"He was scared to death," David's attorney told Courttv.com. "He didn't know what was going to happen from one minute to the next."
A physician later determined David was neither mentally ill nor dangerous, and more than 100 letters of support, written by classmates, faculty and parents, were presented at a court hearing, his attorney said.
David was ordered released from the hospital 72 hours after he had been taken into custody. His mother received $6,000 in medical bills.
Colleen and David Riehm filed a civil suit last month against his former teacher, the principal, and other county officials alleging numerous violations of David's constitutional rights, including freedom of speech, due process, and protection from unreasonable seizure, false imprisonment, and negligent confinement.
"Throwing a kid into a mental hospital for what he writes and not for what he does is unconscionable and unacceptable," Riehm's attorney Peter Nickitas told Courttv.com. "I would expect to see something like this in a book by George Orwell or Franz Kafka or an excerpt from the 'Gulag Archipelago,' but this happened in Minnesota in 2005."
It has also happened in Texas, Kansas, Louisiana and public schools across the nation. link
posted by Christine at Sunday, February 05, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home