4

Their Mere Existence Scares the Shit Out of People

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If you read the above and feel that it's outrageous or disgusting, and if you're insisting there must be something else that can be done with these kids, well, go volunteer at one of these places and see if you come up with any ideas. Human civilization has been unable to thus far, and if you figure it out you've probably got a Nobel Prize waiting for you.

But most people just don't want to know about this. American society has a very specific image of the kind of mentally disabled people we're willing to look at without averting our eyes awkwardly.

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And we're suckers for "emotionally disturbed" teenagers, as long as they're the sexy brooding kind.

But low-functioning handicapped kids can be incredibly violent, and some emotionally disturbed teens stab people with scissors, rather than crack one-liners. Don't worry -- no one with money likes thinking about it, either. Q's school, which charged $100,000 per head, got whatever equipment and training they wanted as long as the cash kept flowing and no one died.

"They're terrified of us, because when things go wrong in this business they go real damn wrong." At one point she was called to justify her "use of force" in taking a hammer away from a student who was using it to shatter his own hand. What she'd done was technically against the rules, because you're not supposed to move on a kid unless they're presenting a clear threat. Fortunately, her bosses were more interested in keeping "child allowed to shatter every bone in his damned hand" out of the newspaper than following the letter of the law.

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The law is generally a few years behind on hammer-related crimes.

3

There's a Lot of Semen

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Teenagers -- no matter what else is going on in their lives -- are completely obsessed with their, um, bits. It's the reason we have the play Romeo and Juliet, and also like 7 billion freaking people. When you confine a bunch of adolescents to what is functionally a colorful prison, they respond not unlike people in regular prison. As Q tells us: "My first week there I started in a classroom where the students were as old as I was -- 21. I was with a 21-year-old male who had a history of masturbating uncontrollably. Prior to this, my experience was with small children and temper tantrums. That man would try to stick his penis through his thighs to jack it, and we had to restrain him. On my third day, the bus dropped him off and the driver screamed, 'I don't know what to do! He's naked! He's naked!' Sure enough, there he was, naked. And covered in semen."

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But hey, we've all been there. Right?

This was a universal experience among our sources. M says: "I'm a reasonably straight guy, but I'm pretty sure I've been ejaculated on just dozens and dozens of times. [The above-referenced autistic teenager] was, uh, gifted. He wore shorts sometimes in the summer, and those shorts were short enough that he could reach the head and ... yeah, right on your damn shoes or your ankle. I had to stop wearing sandals around him." Also, whenever he got the urge, the kid had a tendency to "slam his hand into the table or the wall and shout 'PENIS!' at the top of his lungs. We took the kids on outings into the real world on occasion, so this happened in more Targets and post offices than I can count."

2

There's No Training, and the Rules Are Insane

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So, how do you train people for a job like this? For two of our three sources, you don't. M started work with zero training at all: "The school had no budget for training when I started; it took six months for me to even get a course in physical restraint. They basically just said, 'This kid cracked the last guy's skull and sometimes he smears poop in his teeth. For the love of God don't get bit.'"

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Really, what more employee orientation do you need?

When M was trained, it was with an eight-hour course called Crisis Prevention Intervention. CPI is legendarily shitty among the people who end up needing to use it. M described it as "karate if karate was designed by paranoid lawyers." Q described CPI as a "load of crap" and noted that her high-dollar facility used a more extensive week-long course with a physical and a written exam.

1

You Take Whatever Progress You Can Get

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It's harsh to say these kids are imprisoned, but they're still aggressive adult and adult-sized human beings. They're not being punished, because none of this horrible shit is their fault. But the teachers and staff still have to be as on edge as if they're walking the skullfucker ward at a maximum security prison. It's an environment of paranoia and dread punctuated by coloring books and Kidz Bop albums.

So, more dread.

As Q says, "Once, I was alone with a 20-year-old autistic man who was 6-foot-2, about 230 pounds, as well as a younger student. He got up and started to charge at the younger student. I got in between them, so he tackled me to the ground and knocked me unconscious. When I came to they were pulling him off of me because he was biting my body. You can still see his teeth marks on my arms."

Look, we can't emphasize enough that the kids aren't really responsible for this. They're usually terrified and always freaking out. It's terribly sad, and it lends them something called hysterical strength, aka the adrenaline rush that lets mothers lift cars off their children. This is wonderful for people who can't use a jack properly and do all their auto work at mom's house, but it's disastrous for someone who is technically a white-collar educator.

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"I have a Master's in education, with a minor in taking punches to the face."

Trying to train kids in that situation takes professionalism and the patience of a goddamned saint. As M tells us: "We had another kid in our class, nonverbal and generally the sweetest guy. He just made, like, adorable Cookie Monster noises and ate Cheetos. But he was 200 pounds, and I don't know how, but the dude was stacked. When he flipped out there was no one -- no six ones -- in the special-ed program who could fully restrain him. He flipped out once when my boss, this sweet little lady in her 60s, was trying to teach him to use a hand sign for 'please' before grabbing a new Cheeto. He didn't like when we pulled the bag back, and he went crazy, grabbing at it and eventually settling for my boss's arm. He had long nails and they dug into her and broke the skin. I couldn't pull him off. But she just sat there, calmly talking to him and trying to get him to give the sign for 'Cheeto' so she could unclench her hands and give him the bag. She won eventually. And she wound up with forearms like raw hamburger for her troubles."

M wasn't the only one with stories of horrific trauma turning into a blood-soaked-yet-positive learning experience. B, at the center for disturbed teens, once spent more than an hour restraining a young man who writhed and wrestled and threatened to "defile" B's pets until the kid finally broke down in the kind of physical and emotional exhaustion that only comes from trying earnestly to claw someone's goddamn eyes out.

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Pro Tip: It's much easier to gouge eyes out.

"Then something incredible happened: he started to cry. He began talking about his biological mother and how his earliest memory was standing beside her as a 3-year-old when she was killed in a drive-by shooting. It was information no one, not even his psychiatrist, knew. We ended up covering more positive psychological ground with him in the 10 minutes that followed than we had in the previous two years with him."

And, if some Hollywood producer sees this article and decides to make a movie about these kids, you can bet that scene would make it in. They'd just leave out the months that came before and after -- the long days, the bruises, and the staff regularly trudging off to the restroom to wash semen out of their clothes.

For more insider perspectives, check out 7 Things No One Tells You About Being Homeless and 5 Unexpected Things I Learned from Being a Heroin Addict. Have a story to share with Cracked? Reach us here.

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