The mother of a disabled student has filed a lawsuit against a Maine school and a former employee, accusing them of hurting her son, covering it up and improperly holding him and others in a “seclusion room.”
Bobbi Jo Simard of Chelsea brought the lawsuit against Central Maine Learning Center and a former employee on behalf of her child, who is referred to as “BC” in the complaint, has an emotional disability and now attends another school. The lawsuit filed Monday in an Augusta court seeks an unspecified amount of damages.
The allegations mostly revolve around an incident from last fall. But the lawsuit comes after the Maine Legislature and Gov. Janet Mills unanimously approved a proposal earlier this year to make it easier for school staff to seclude and restrain students.
Simard’s lawsuit makes wide claims about those practices at Central Maine Learning Center, a state-licensed special purpose private school in Belgrade serving students with disabilities and other needs. The center has been open for more than 20 years and is operated by Maine School Solutions, which has two other centers in central Maine.
Simard’s son began attending the school in 2023. The lawsuit claims leaders and staff “fostered an environment of abuse toward students with disabilities in its care, saying staff used unlicensed restraints and seclusions and neither properly documented nor notified parents of their use.
One Central Maine Learning Center employee, who is not named in the lawsuit, talked about “breaking” disabled students while they were in the “seclusion room” for extended periods of time, the lawsuit claims.
In the fall of 2024, Simard’s son was disrupting his science class by “yelling and becoming upset,” per the lawsuit. An employee, Peter Prescott of Augusta, told the boy, who was 11 years old at the time, to leave the room. When the boy did not, the lawsuit claims Prescott pulled the boy’s chair out from under him, causing him to hit his face on his desk before falling back and striking his head on the ground.
The suit says Prescott and a colleague escorted the crying child out of the classroom and into the seclusion room. At least two school employees who were in the room at the time wrote reports documenting the “assault,” but Central Maine Learning Center supervisors “altered those reports to make it look like an accident,” the lawsuit says.
The school allowed Prescott to resign, according to the complaint. In a statement, Central Maine Learning Center acknowledged the incident involving “a provider inappropriately removing a chair.” But it denied the broader allegations in the lawsuit and confirmed the employee no longer works at the center.
“We take all matters of student safety seriously,” the center said in its statement. “Our staff receive regular training, and we remain focused on prevention, swift action and maintaining a safe, supportive environment for every student.”
Contact information for Prescott, whose LinkedIn profile notes he changed jobs and currently works as a special education specialist, was not immediately available. A message sent through his current employer’s website was not immediately returned Wednesday.
The Maine law passed this year weakens a 2021 law that Mills allowed to take effect without her signature to restrict the seclusion and restraint practices. Advocates noted around that time that Maine has had the highest rate of seclusion and restraint among states.
Experts have warned the practice can cause lasting trauma for students with disabilities, but some teachers and administrators pushed for this year’s change after citing increased issues with student behavior that harms educators.
Augusta attorney Matt Morgan, who is representing Simard, said the lawsuit’s allegations raise questions over why the Legislature has since relaxed the state’s seclusion and restraint policies.
“It’s clear that this school failed a particularly vulnerable group of kids it was supposed to be providing important services to,” Morgan said.
BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this story.