CCTV shows pupils abused and locked in padded room
CCTV from one school obtained by the BBC shows autistic children being packed into padded rooms, thrown to the floor, choked or left in vomit.
A security expert told CNN the footage at Whitefield School in north-east London was akin to “torture”. It provides the first glimpse into the reality students face.
A police investigation into footage of abuse filmed in the special school’s “calm room” between 2014 and 2017 ended earlier this year without any charges being laid. However, parents say they are left to cope with the trauma alone.
The school said new leadership discovered the video after the room was closed and shared it with police.
Around 40 children with learning disabilities and severe mental disorders were kept in rooms for hours – often without food or water.
Six of the families have given consent for the BBC to show the footage. They want us to reveal the scale and severity of the trauma their children have experienced – and they feel they have been misled.
The video showed the students clearly in agony, with many unable to speak and many self-harming for extended periods of time.
In footage seen by the BBC, the only time staff at the Walthamstow school intervened after children entered the classroom was when a boy repeatedly threw his shoe at a CCTV camera. They rushed in to stop him and an assistant coach apparently attacked him.
“It breaks my heart,” the mother of an abused child said after watching the CCTV video for the first time. “You wouldn’t even do that to a dog.”
Even now, government guidance only says that in England, the time for removing disruptive students from a classroom must be “limited” and that facilities must be “appropriate”.
The BBC also found evidence of abuse in isolation rooms at other schools across the UK. An autistic child is kept in a cage.
Meanwhile, local MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the Whitefield school footage “will certainly bring about profound change”, describing it as “jaw-dropping”.
Security expert Elizabeth Swan said it was “hands down the worst footage she had ever seen”.
“You look at the children, they’re beaten down and respond to this treatment with self-harm, it’s torture,” she said.
Whitefield School was rated as outstanding until 2017, when Ofsted found it was using empty, padded rooms with no windows to isolate children.
But the existence of the CCTV footage was not made public until 2021, when the BBC was informed An investigation has been launched after a box of USB sticks was found Contains 500 hours of disturbing footage inside the room.
In April, we revealed how Safeguarding investigation commissioned by school proves six staff at Whitefield abused pupils – But they were not referred to the government’s disclosure and barring service, which can ban people from working with children, and three continued to work at the school.
Since we began our investigation, we have obtained leaked school and council documents and spoken to 17 of the 39 affected families.
Following our reporting in April, police formally invited family members to view the abuse, with Jamie’s mother Deborah viewing the calming room footage.
“You saw them open the door and punch Jamie in the back – he flew to the floor,” she said, fighting back tears.
“No one is responsible”
Jamie’s coat and bag were in the room with him. Deborah said this showed Jamie was “calculated” and even if he calmed down, he would stay there until the end of the day.
She said Jamie suffered his first seizure after he started being placed in a sedation unit and believed his treatment directly contributed to his epilepsy.
Stress can contribute to the development of epilepsy or trigger seizures.
Other families have told the BBC that their children suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being placed in calm rooms. One child suffered severe psychological harm and was later admitted to a mental hospital because he was at risk of self-harm, his family said.
Parents said they complained to the school about unexplained injuries and the use of the room, but this did not lead to an investigation, despite CCTV cameras providing evidence.
“This was a cover-up from above,” Deborah said. “I don’t understand how they can get away with this level of abuse and no one is held accountable.”
Another family complained after their son came home with multiple nose injuries. CCTV leaked to the BBC showed the boy punching himself in the nose while alone in his room.
The BBC spent months trying to find out who knew about concerns about the use of the rooms and why there was no investigation into the injuries suffered by children in calm rooms following Ofsted’s 2017 visit.
After the rooms were closed, a review by directors of the trust that runs the school said they were visited by governors and a staff member from local council Waltham Forest. But it did not record any of the concerns raised at the time.
The BBC understands that most of CCTV’s review work is done by a teaching assistant.
Once a week, she downloads the video and compares it with employees’ written observations before sharing any incidents and concerns with her boss.
But she failed to report more than 20 videos showing excessive use of force, according to the school’s safeguarding investigation into her conduct, which concluded she “turned a blind eye” to the failings.
The investigation also found that she herself abused a child, using a rugby training mat to push the child into a corner of the room. Despite these findings, she was not fired.
“Stay in the cage”
She told investigators that “as a teaching assistant, it was difficult to contact school leadership” and that she had become “insensitive” to the footage, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by the BBC.
Another teaching assistant told safety investigators she saw footage of a colleague observing a child masturbating for more than an hour. The police report said they could not corroborate her account.
The BBC also revealed other issues affecting the isolation of children with special educational needs across the UK, with an autistic child being kept in a cage at a school almost 10 years ago.
The area under the stairwell is fenced off by one cage and another with mattresses inside, at Include, a school in Bury St Edmunds for those outside mainstream education. Alternative education is provided for children and is run by charity Catch22.
The mother of an autistic child only discovered the cages were in use when she visited the school without an appointment and became increasingly concerned about the true nature of so-called “The Den”.
She said the cages in the stairwell were covered with blankets when the child yelled, and her son was sometimes kept in one of the cages for up to six hours without water or a toilet.
“Even animals don’t stay in cages for that long,” she said.
Council records show Ofsted was informed of the mother’s findings but did not carry out an inspection. Ofsted now says it cannot find any records of complaints.
Catch22 said the spaces had been used by previous leadership and a 2018 city council report concluded there was no evidence students were locked inside.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith says there is an urgent need to regulate the use and design of calm rooms.
Following our investigation in April, the Children’s Commissioner also called for guidance on the use of seclusion in special schools to be changed, but this has not happened. The Department for Education said it was “looking at” ways to “strengthen” it.
The Metropolitan Police said they were continuing a “wider investigation” into Whitefield but it was not related to abuse. The Crown Prosecution Service declined to comment.
The Prosperity Trust, which runs Whitefield, said it had learned from the failure of the case.
Ofsted said the Department for Education and Waltham Forest had a duty to investigate the harm caused to children after the rooms were discovered.
Despite failing to launch an investigation following Ofsted’s inspection, Waltham Forest said it would now commission a local review of the case, which it said would be “completely independent”. It said it had not at any point requested a review of the CCTV because it was unaware of its existence.
Waltham Forest also said it had provided counseling services to families. But the families told the BBC that their children needed extensive and extensive help to deal with the abuse they faced and that they would live with the consequences of the abuse for the rest of their lives.
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