Police uncover abuse at centre for autistic youth

Secret recordings show beatings, confinement at day centre

(ANSA) - Rome, July 15 - Five educators working at a centre for children and young people suffering from autism were arrested Tuesday for allegedly abusing the youngsters in their care. The centre's coordinator Roberto Colucci, 47, and staffers Rossana Raponi, 53, Maria Romana Bastiani, 46, Susan Ciaccioni, 43, and Luciana D'Amario, 53, now face possible mistreatment and abduction charges in connection with the alleged abuse at the Casa di Alice, a rehabilitation centre for autistic youngsters aged between 8 and 20 in the seaside town of Grottammare in the central Marche region. The arrests were ordered on the basis of video recordings made using hidden cameras that showed the educators manhandling the youngsters and shutting them up in a confined space.

Run by a social cooperative on behalf of the local municipal authorities, the centre was held up as the flagship of an experimental project aiming to "improve the relationship of autistic youngsters with external reality through behavioral-educational interventions". Undercover investigators focused on use of the so-called 'containment room', an unfurnished space measuring 7-8 square meters with a small closed window in which the youngsters were allegedly locked up systematically for no apparent reason, and where they were also left to urinate.

In one piece of footage a boy could be seen lying on the floor bare-chested, while another wearing a sweatshirt was dragged inside by an educator and locked in; he tried desperately to get someone to open the door, but no-one came. The young victims "showed a total absence of violent behaviour or actions that might justify their 'containment', sometimes for several hours at a time, inside that room, where they were sometimes stripped naked by the educators and forced to wet themselves," investigators said. Meanwhile the 'containment room' has been sealed by police.