The first civil lawsuit has been filed against the Kanawha County Board of Education and a now former Holz Elementary School teacher, Nancy Boggs, who is under criminal investigation for allegedly abusing students in her self-contained special needs classroom.
Plaintiffs Craig and Beth Bowden filed the lawsuit on behalf of their son, T.B., a nine year old child who has Pachygyria, Schizencephaly and Cerebral Palsy.
The abuse was captured on video surveillance as a result of a new law in West Virginia. According to a story by WCHS TV, the parents said “Watching that video brought both of us to tears,” Craig said as he started to choke up describing what he and his wife saw on the video shown to them by Kanawha County Schools.
“Trenton wasn’t doing his assignment correctly so Nancy Boggs grabbed him by the neck, turned his head toward her and smacked him across the face. And then he burst into tears and he cried out, ‘I want my daddy.’ And she told him, ‘daddy’s not going to help you. He’s not allowed in here. He’s not going to help you,’ ” Craig said. “Then she proceeded to scream at him and call him a baby.”
The Bowdens are being represented by attorney Ben Salango of Salango Law, PLLC. Salango has filed a number of cases on behalf of special needs children who suffered abuse in the classroom. He represented families in the Adri Pack case and the Horace Mann Middle School abuse cases. The Adri Pack case led to changes in West Virginia law requiring cameras in self-contained special needs classrooms and also made it a crime for a teacher to verbally abuse special needs children.