What happened
In autumn 2020 a teacher at a special school in south Wales was asked to take a class of six severely autistic pupils aged eight to ten. She told police she had been given the class seven weeks beforehand and that “there was no support”. The teaching assistant, always with older children before this class, told officers she had “no proper autism training”.
On 19 October 2020, per the prosecution opening reported by BBC News, ear defenders were taken from a nine-year-old boy and another child was pulled across the yard. He was non-verbal and needed them to tolerate noise.
Both denied seven counts of assault by beating and cruelty to a child under 16.
The outcome
On 16 November 2022 a jury at Swansea Crown Court cleared both of all charges. The judge told the families they had “not let their children down”. No regulatory outcome is recorded.
What went wrong
First the deployment. Six pupils with severe autism and high sensory need were given a teacher with weeks of notice, no support, because the school could not recruit.
Then the training. The teacher said it was “months and months” before she had any. The assistant described taking ear defenders off children as “what I have been told to do, I’ve seen everybody doing it”. A technique was in use because colleagues used it, not because anyone had decided it was right, written it down or checked it.
And nobody had classified it. Taking ear defenders from a child who needs them to tolerate noise is an aversive practice. It is not on a restraint register, so it was never planned, monitored or reviewed.
What it teaches
The system did eventually work: a colleague reported what happened, the school had CCTV, the matter reached a jury. That is worth saying where staff suspect speaking up achieves nothing. But it took two years to ask questions a supervision conversation could have asked in a week.
An acquittal is not a finding of good practice. The jury had to be sure of assault. It did not have to decide whether an untrained adult should have been alone with six high-need pupils, or whether removing ear defenders is ever a legitimate answer to distress. Those questions remain open, and a school can act on them without a court.
Training that arrives late is not training: new staff learn by copying the room, and its habits become the standard.
Questions for the room
- Who decides that a pupil’s ear defenders or sensory aids may be taken away, and where is that written down?
- If a colleague described a technique as “what I’ve been told to do, I’ve seen everybody doing it”, what in your supervision would catch it?
- When a class is hard to staff, what do you change about the deployment rather than the behaviour?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed, on court reporting. BBC News reports of 7, 11 and 16 November 2022 were read live on 7 November 2026. WalesOnline’s report of 16 November returned 403 to an automated fetch.
The court did not find the assault proved: both were acquitted on every count, and nothing here should be read as a finding that they assaulted anyone. The staff are not named, because they were acquitted. The pupils are not named or identifiable; the school and local authority are withheld because six pupils in one class named by school would be identifiable from the reporting. What is described is the prosecution’s opening and the defendants’ evidence as reported, not a judgment.
Our physical intervention training for schools treats deployment, supervision and debrief as part of the intervention.
Sources
- BBC News, 7 November 2022 · https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63548898
- BBC News, 11 November 2022 · https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63600006
- BBC News, 16 November 2022 · https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-63651713
Reviewed 7 November 2026.