Opposition Grows to Use of Restraint and Seclusion in Schools

Deb Bellare isn't sure when her son Sam's nightmares began, but remembers it as sometime in 2006.

Sam Bellare and his mother Deb.

That was the year Bellare's breast cancer developed, the year of her mastectomy and chemotherapy treatments. It was also the year Sam, who has autism, turned 6.

And it was the year Bellare first learned Greece Central School District employees, coping with Sam's destructive physical and emotional outbursts, would sometimes pin her first-grader to the floor before whisking him off to a tiny "quiet room" to scream himself into exhaustion.

"I was sick, I wasn't paying attention and I didn't know any better. I thought they were doing the right thing," said Bellare.