Mr. Bean Opens Investigation Into Highlands County Safe Schools

Shattered Dreams, Broken Patriot

The true story of a father’s search for justice after a town’s horrific response to a bullying incident, and what it says about our public schools and law enforcement system

By Bobbie Bean

Shattered Dreams, Broken Patriot: The true story of a father’s attempts to find justice after a town’s horrific response to a bullying incident, and what it says about our public schools and law enforcement system

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Shattered Dreams, Broken Patriot

1st Edition Printing, January 2012

Library of Congress

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the support of the following people, businesses, and organizations: Advocate Cathy Cannivet. My father Bobbie Bean Sr., Nathan Huckabee, the minister of Sunridge Baptist Church Dr. Don Roberts, the Rev. Bobby Walker, and Justice for Children blog talk radio hostess Theresa Edwards for their unwavering support and friendship. Grace Academy and the South Florida Community College for their financial support for Matthew’s education. David and Dick Crooks, Crooks Printing & Artrageous Advertizing, the Miami Dolphins, and the Miami University Hurricanes for picking up the production costs of my lobbying materials. Teacher Gabe Reed, the Highlands County Boys and Girls Clubs of Avon Park and Sebring, and David Sawh of the Florida Attorney General’s Division of Victim Services for their financial and emotional support. Robert Garcia, Lester Carter, Gary Bradford and the Florida Police Benevolent Association, State Trooper Smith of the Florida Highway Patrol, Karen Horowitz of the National Association to Prevent Teacher Abuse, and Karen Taylor for their advice and kindnesses. The Highlands Regional Medical Center, Tampa General Hospital, and Shands Children’s Hospital for their outstanding medical care for Matthew. Attorney David Tirella, Victoria Hiller of Capitol News Service, Aaron Nevins, and children’s rights lobbyist Dick Hollahan for their efforts during the passage of the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act. Debbie Johnston, who spearheaded the bill and invested countless hours into its passage, the parents of bullied children who lobbied for the bill, and the bill’s sponsors: Rep. Nick Thompson (R), Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff (R), and Rep. Gary Aubuchon (R); cosponsors: Sen. Thad Altman (R), Rep. Aaron Bean (R), Rep. Susan Bucher (D), Rep. Doug Holder (R), Rep. Will Kendrick (R), Rep. Martin Kiar (D), Rep. Paige Kreegel (R), Rep. Rick Kriseman (D), Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R), Rep. Juan-Carlos Planas (R), Rep. Robert Schenck (R), Rep. Michael Scionti (D), Rep. Shelley Vana (D), Rep. James Waldman (D), and Rep. Alan Williams (D). Also, some of the strongest supporters on the floor: Rep. Frederica Wilson (D), Sen. Cary Baker (R), Sen. Larcenia Bullard (D), Sen. Evelyn Lynn (R), Rep. Edward Bullard (D), Sen. Ted Deutch (D), Sen. Mike Haridopolos (R) , Sen. Jeremy Ring (D), and Sen. Stephen Wise (R). And my beloved children, who held my hand as we carried the torch through dark waters.

“All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” - British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, 1729-1797

Forward The Bean family story is about the courage, love, and conviction of a father as he tries to make sense of his community’s response after his son is violently beaten on school property. It also is a shocking example of how easy it is for public agencies, such as a school district and local law enforcement, to railroad justice and civil rights. To use the expression “bullying” hardly does justice to describe the nearly fatal blows inflicted to the head of this young boy. But the inappropriate and inhumane response by the community was even more devastating for this simple, rural Florida family who, up until this time, was merely pursuing their “American Dream.” Matthew suffered three beatings on that fateful morning. The third and most destructive was intended to silence him about the first and second beatings. He was told to keep his mouth shut “or else.” In keeping with this small town’s pick-up- driving, Nascar-racing, steroid-driven and boot-kickin’ southern mentality, his father was bullied, too. Bobbie Bean was repeatedly subjected to intense and coordinated bullying tactics by adults as he sought answers about how this could have happened to his son. Their intent was to inflict silence through punishment. The school district, with county and state agencies, appeared to manipulate and withhold the facts in order to cover up the truth. The entire family suffered retaliation because of the father’s pursuit of justice. Meanwhile, the perpetrator was publicly celebrated as a wrestling hero after the incident—or more accurately, crime. There are even portions of this story where law enforcement appears to sadistically enjoy taunting and humiliating the Bean family. As you read this story, it will sound outrageous and unbelievable. But having followed this story for six years, and having read documents and reviewed evidence, I believe it is true. The heartbreaking account in this book includes one beating on the bus and two others at the school within three hours. In my opinion, it is one of the worst- handled bullying cases within a school district on record. What happened to the family afterward is indicative of a much bigger problem: Taxpayer-funded government agencies engaging in human and civil rights violations. The bullying and brutality became not only accepted, but celebrated, rewarded, sanctioned, and

4 protected. What a sad statement about the decline of ethics, civility, and accountability in American society. I was introduced to the Bean family’s tragic situation in 2006 after my son was victimized by a bully at school. A group in Florida had banded together to pass an anti-bullying bill—The Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act, which became law in Florida in 2008. After exhausting all avenues to bring justice to their situation, the Beans also joined the effort to change the laws. Their shocking story was so moving, I began helping them any way I could. As an advocate for the educational, civil, and human rights of special needs children in my own public school district, I had experienced and witnessed powerful retaliatory tactics. Such tactics are meted out to parents and their children when parents dare to question the actions or policies of a school district and its administrators. I also became aware that the corruption and bullying tactics by entities tied to the school district in my own county actually were pervasive throughout Florida and beyond. When the general public hears about this kind of orchestrated retaliation by public entities, they think you must be exaggerating or mistaken. It must be an isolated case, they say. Americans want to believe that school districts and law enforcement are sacred, trustworthy institutions—right up there with pediatricians and churches. Yet parents requesting any of the federally mandated services for their special needs children, or accountability in a bullying situation, often wander into a snake pit of cruelty, dishonesty, and corruption. I have watched countless parents innocently believe they could secure for their child what they were entitled to rightfully and legally. These parents eventually discover to their horror that there’s absolutely no way they can successfully challenge, let alone win, in such a system. It is well-funded by taxpayer dollars, incestuously politically connected, and void of proper state or federal monitoring. School districts are like their own little governments: Their tentacles of power and resources extend throughout a community and beyond. This is not to say that some public schools aren’t handling bullying incidents appropriately. These districts should be lauded for their efforts, good leadership, and sensible approach. Such schools put bullying at the top of the teaching list. They incorporate a Compliments Day, No Name Calling Week, or workshops, such as Challenge Day, into the school year to teach tolerance and appropriate social skills. They are proactive when bullying takes place, and they have appropriate consequences. They treat parents with dignity and respect when addressing their

5 concerns. They are less likely to have children committing suicide, being injured, or acting out because of unaddressed, in-house bullying issues. Most people do not realize that school districts in most areas are the single most powerful entity in a community or district. It is easy for such a large entity to bypass anti-bullying efforts and use money, instead, to create the “best” athletic program in the region. They frequently are the largest employer and the largest purveyor of goods and services. They are politically interlinked with local and state politics, law enforcement, legal services, medical and psychological services, social services, county code enforcement, the chamber of commerce, and county commissioners. The system set-up is incestuous. When unchecked, dangerous bullying of parents can easily take place. It’s not uncommon for parents to discover that their child’s educational and even medical records are falsified, destroyed, manipulated, fabricated, and sometimes forged. If harassment, retaliation, and punishment don’t work, trickery or serious false accusations can occur in an attempt to stop parents from pushing for their children’s rights. Parents may be falsely accused of abuse, sexual misconduct, mental health issues, and Munchhausen by Proxy Syndrome —a very rare condition where parents harm their children to seek attention for themselves. Lies may be spread to ruin the parents’ reputations, sometimes resulting in lost jobs, friendships, and incomes. When they turn to the outside system for help, they discover limited support or costly legal advice. This kind of ostracization and stifling is a form of psychological warfare that school districts and law enforcement are trained in when dealing with “challenging” parents. There are even workshops available for state and school district administrators to attend led by firms, such as the Weatherly Law Firm, and psychologists and well-respected educators from universities. Instruction is provided on how to effectively suppress parental opposition. We have become a society that’s barely aware of the many inappropriate ways our taxes are being used in public schools. I have experienced and witnessed the unbridled bullying of parents by school district officials who were protected by tenure and also sovereign immunity. In simple terms, sovereign immunity means government agencies and those employed by them enjoy a certain degree of immunity from civil lawsuits. If you sue a government entity, such as a school district, most states have a cap on what you can collect for damages, no matter how heinous the behavior, act, or injury. That further

6 encourages misconduct because no one is held accountable or pays a price. And remember, public schools have millions of dollars to bury a “pesky” parent, without repercussions. Who pays the attorneys that represent the school district, the expert witnesses, and all costs associated with such a lawsuit? The taxpayers. Some parents think they can pursue their child’s federally protected rights by filing a complaint with any of the designated state or federal agencies responsible for ensuring the educational and civil rights of these children. They are so very sadly mistaken. It doesn’t work. Many times it only intensifies the harassment and intimidation and causes more retaliation. I have witnessed extremely disturbing and criminal retaliation against professionals, such as attorneys or journalists, who attempt to assist these parents or expose the horrors of the system. I have watched the toll of inflicted stress that results in destroyed health, marriages, and businesses. Such stress also causes bankruptcies, suicides, and mental health problems—such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. You can read about all of these outcomes right here in this book. The toll of this unchecked system on children is the worst of all. School districts that fail to implement good anti-bullying programs can experience high absentee rates. Without good programs, harassed children become too afraid to attend school. Such schools are more likely to have children committing suicide or violent acts out of unbearable frustration. What can be done to create a fairer and more humane system for the most vulnerable of our citizenry who are required by law to attend or send their children to a public school because they can’t afford a private one? Sweeping changes must be made by Congress that more closely represent the kind of civil, constitutional, and human rights we have come to expect in a civilized democratic system that supposedly sets the standard for the rest of the world. There should be repercussions when school district administrators and other public officials harass, abuse, and violate innocent citizens who are lawfully protecting their children’s basic rights. Education reform is needed in order for each and every child to have an opportunity to fully and safely benefit from education, rather than be harmed by it. Our youth are our greatest natural resource, and an investment in their future is an investment in our country’s future.

This book is dedicated to every child who has ever been bullied, and to those who stand up for and protect children from such violence.

Harlem (Dream Deferred) What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Chapter 1

I was hanging out with someone from Sebring’s African-American community at the town depot one night when the town whistle blew. “Know why they blow that whistle every night at nine and every morning at seven?” Louis asked me with a nod toward the town center. He then described a dark side to this small, ordinary Central Florida town that, as a newcomer, I didn’t know about. The African-American community in Sebring is on the east side of the railroad tracks. The mostly white community is on the west side. Years ago, people of color would line up at 7 a.m. on the east side until the whistle blew. That signaled that they could walk or drive across the tracks to work or shop. By 9 p.m., however, they had to be back on the east side. The east side was poor and run down compared to the spritely west side with its white-columned buildings and neat sidewalks. Its primary residents were African- Americans, Cubans, Latinos, and immigrants, many of whom first came to Florida to work in the orange groves and cane fields. “If they didn’t make it back to their side of the tracks by 9 o’clock, they ran the risk of being harassed and bullied by the good ol’ boys from the Sheriff’s Office and all-white fire station,” my friend said. Then he leaned forward and, as if to make his point absolutely clear, told me a story that I just can’t shake from my memories. “I was delayed one night,” he began. “It was just past nine when I started back over the tracks. A couple of guys from the Sheriff’s Office drove up and asked me why I was on the wrong side of the tracks. Then they beat the crap out of me until I begged them to stop.” ““You want us to stop?” I remember them yelling at me with a laugh.” ““Dance, Dance like a monkey on the back of our truck,” they told me. And one of them twirled his little finger in a circle.” “So I did,” he said with a look of shame while staring at the dirt beneath his feet. “And then, as if that wasn’t enough, they told me to hang from the edge of the cab with my feet up like a monkey. I grabbed the back of the pickup and hung there for 10 seconds while they grinned and laughed.”

“That whistle,” he told me, “that whistle still blows every day from the all- white fire station. It’s a psychological thing, a reminder to the people of color that they belong on the poor side.” I had a hard time believing what my new friend had told me. According to the Greater Sebring Chamber of Commerce, Sebring is best known for its “warm hospitality and welcome spirit, Sebring International Speedway, and historic downtown.” Founded by George Sebring in 1912, the “City of the Circle” lakeside community was designed with a circular plan to attract businessmen and entrepreneurs. Outside the city, the countryside is known for cattle ranches and citrus groves. It’s the county seat of Highlands County, with 1,029 square miles and a population of about 100,000. At least that’s the PR we were given when we first decided to invest our life savings into the “land of our dreams” and moved from Ft. Lauderdale in 1995 to our country property in Sebring. We started off in a 288-foot trailer while we built our home from the ground up. We even cut our own stone for the floors and dug out a small duck pond. But Sebring turned out to be not quite as friendly and hospitable as the business community, Chamber brochures, and real estate agents projected. Our first years building our home were relatively uneventful, with the exception of a few tiffs with our neighbors. But 2002 was a disturbing eye opener. We experienced first-hand the kind of “law and order” my African-American friend described. Our experience was such a violation of justice, such a twisting of the law, that our lives were irreversibly changed. We were living an idyllic life in the countryside raising children when I put two of our sons on Bus 153 on Sept. 3, 2002. Greg and Matthew were headed down the road to one of their first days in sixth and eighth grades when Matthew spat out the bus window because of his allergies. The phlegm boomeranged, flew back inside the bus, and hit a well-known town bully nine seats behind him. Clem stood up and demanded an answer for why Matthew spat on him. “I didn’t mean it,” replied Matthew, according to witness accounts on record with the Sebring Police Department. Six years later, Clem provided this more graphic and detailed account of the events during a deposition: “I was sitting in my seat. I felt the spit hit my face. Somebody said – I was like, “What was that?” Somebody proceeded to tell me that Matthew spit.

I walked up there, I asked him did he spit? And he goes, “Yes.” He goes, “I didn’t mean to spit on you.” I said, “You didn’t mean to?” He goes, “No, I was spitting out the window. I have bad allergies.” … I said, “So it was an accident?” He said, “Yes.”” While everyone agrees on these events, the accounts vary with the rest of the story. Clem claims Matthew began taunting him. But most witnesses on the bus say that Clem couldn’t control his temper, exploded in rage, and threw two very swift sucker punches to the back and side of his head. Clem was one of the strongest eighth graders in the school and a top wrestler—his punches were forceful. Matthew quickly crouched down in his seat and asked Clem to stop, according to numerous witness accounts. He then grabbed Clem by the wrist with one hand, the throat with the other, and attempted to push him back. “Sit down!”screamed Randy, a tenth grader who stood up and grabbed the other wrist. “What you doing!” screamed Clem in a rage. “I’m keeping you from going to prison!” Randy screamed back. “I’m not done with you yet,” Clem yelled at Matthew while taking a seat. “We’ll settle this issue later.” “I hit him in the shoulder and he choked me,” Clem later wrote in a statement of events. But a half-dozen other accounts given by students on the bus said Matthew was beaten around the head repeatedly. Once the bus reached the middle school, the bus driver and two deans intervened. But despite the fierce blows, no one sent Clem and Matthew to the principal’s office or nurse’s station. The boys were sent to their classes, the first of which was Physical Education. According to his brother, Greg, Matthew staggered when he got off the bus and began experiencing vision problems. “Finish him off, finish him off!” A group of kids stood around chanting as Matthew and Clem walked into school. After the gym class at around 9 a.m., about 30 students were milling around the locker room. Some were talking about the earlier fight on the bus. From the other side of a row of lockers, Clem listened to the conversations and overheard Matthew tell another student that he thought he could beat him in a fight, according to the deposition.

“Why did you say you can beat my ass?” Clem asked, according to one witness. Two of Clems’s friends moved in and trapped Matthew from both sides. “Let’s go right now! You won’t tell?” “No, I won’t,” Matthew replied, as Clem removed his watch and shirt. “All you gotta do if you wanna go is touch me, touch me,” Clem taunted. “I don’t wanna start a fight,” Matthew replied. Clem pushed Matthew, and Matthew pushed back. Clem hit Matthew twice, according to one witness. When Matthew fell to the ground, Clem started choking him. “Who’s choking you now, bitch!” he screamed. “I give up, I give up,” Matthew cried. Clem continued with his taunts as he immobilized Matthew with a full nelson wrestling hold, according to one witness: “Don’t f--- with me again,” he yelled. “None of this happened, okay? You hit your head on the lockers, and then I walked out of the room.” Clem finally let go of Matthew. He slowly staggered to his feet. It was clear to everyone at that point that Matthew was struggling. Yet no one stepped forward. There still were no adults in view. So Clem decided to accompany him to the nursing station. “You need to tell them that you fell and struck your head on the bench,” Clem instructed Matthew, according to an affidavit taken by arresting officer L. Milbrecht on Sept. 24, 2002. Then he continued to bully and badger Matthew during the long walk to the nurse’s office. “I feel a little funny,” Matthew apparently told Clem as they walked the full length of a football field, according to Clem’s testimony in the 2008 deposition. During that walk, Clem hit him in the back of the head one more time in a final attempt to silence him. When they arrived, both boys told the nurse, Pat LeFiles, that Matthew fell in the locker room and hit his head on a bench. Matthew was so traumatized, so fearful that Clem would come after him again, that he lied repeatedly to her about the incident. In an account taken by the same arresting officer on Sept. 9, 2002, 10 student witnesses shared similar accounts of what happened on the bus and in the locker room. Matthew sustained four to five blows on the bus and another three to four in the locker room, according to those witness accounts. But Matthew was the only person who testified about the final blow on the way to the nurse’s station. That third

12 incident, that final punch added up to a total of about 10 hits by one of the largest and strongest boys in eighth grade. Clem was on the fast track to becoming a top wrestler on the school team. He received state recognition in his junior and senior years. He was an all-around athlete who also had taken boxing and Taekwondo. He was a formidable opponent for any eighth grader, and Matthew was not a particularly strong young man. So the damage was significant from the very first blows on the bus. After the nurse gave Matthew an ice pack for his head and called my wife, Carolyn, she sent him to his next class. But he was woozy and became increasingly despondent and incoherent in the classroom. He asked to be escorted back to the nurse’s station. Only then did he finally tell Ms. LeFiles the truth about what happened. Additional school personnel were brought in, and through his strained and sometimes disjointed speech, Matthew told them what really took place. Around this time my wife, Carolyn, arrived at the school. “Take me home. Take me home. Take me home,” was all Matthew was able to mumble at that point as he lay curled up on the cot. She was never instructed to take Matthew to the hospital, nor was an ambulance ever considered by school personnel. Two deans carried him out to Carolyn’s car. His brain was swelling from the repeated blows over a 2 ½-hour period of time. On the ride home, he vomited and began to lose consciousness. By the time Carolyn pulled into the driveway, Matthew’s eyes were sunk backward and totally white. As a longtime sports enthusiast and professional weight lifter, I knew what that meant. I took my knuckles and rolled them into Matthew’s sternum to evoke a response. There was none. He threw up again and slumped back into the car seat. I knew at that point that if we didn’t get him to an emergency room fast, he could be in serious danger. “Get out of the car,” I yelled to Carolyn in a panic. I slid into the driver’s seat and grabbed the steering wheel. The hospital was 10 minutes away, but it was the longest, most excruciating drive of my life. When we arrived at Highlands Regional Medical Center, I gathered Matthew’s limp body into my arms and kicked in the swinging hospital door. “I need help,” I screamed as I ran in with his listless body in my arms. The nurse hurried over and checked his pupil response with her pocket flashlight. “He’s been like this for hours! What took you so long?” she cried. “We need to get him in immediately!”

“As fast as I found out was as fast as I could get here,” I cried. At that time, I didn’t know that Matthew had been hit on the bus in what turned out to be a 2 ½- hour melee. The swelling continued to increase with each blow from the perpetrator. “Where did this happen?” she asked. “Sebring Middle School,” I replied. “Not another one,” she said with a sigh. A neurological exam found him “unresponsive” and at another point “combative.” He vomited three times while fading in and out of consciousness. They rushed him into an emergency room to assess his condition after multiple seizures. Sweat poured down my cheeks. My hands shook. For the next 22 minutes I wondered if I might have to tell Carolyn that our first-born son had been killed. During the entire time in the emergency room, I never left his side. As his condition stabilized, the local hospital staff performed an MRI brain scan. They found swelling near the temporal region. The doctor said his brain had bounced around like a basketball inside his skull. He’d been hit so many times his brain actually banged against the other side of the inside of his skull. “Subgaleal hematoma present in the parietal temporal lobe region,” was the radiology department findings. At 11:25 that morning, a nursing assessment found him unresponsive with sluggish pupils. He responded to sterna rubs, but he couldn’t speak. It was just the beginning of a nine-hour-long coma. We had no idea what our son would be like at the end of this dark numbness. “These injuries are beyond our professional capabilities,” the doctor informed me. “We need to flight lift him to intensive care at Tampa General.” As we waited for the helicopter, Officer Milbrecht from the Sebring Police Department arrived to take a statement from Matthew. It became apparent that he couldn’t speak. “Do you want to press charges?” she asked. “This boy could die!” the nurse said emphatically while interrupting me. She was right. At times it seemed as if Matthew had been an inch from death. “Yeah,” I said with a slight nod and a shaking voice. “Who did this?” I asked Officer Milbrecht. It was the first time I had started to piece together the events. “Clem,” she replied. “I’m not surprised,” she added with a roll of her eyes. As they loaded Matthew into the helicopter, the assistant principal of the middle school, Stu Guthrie, approached with his business card.

“How is Matthew doing?” he asked anxiously. “One of the boys in the locker room said he looked like he was going into a coma.” I took his business card and walked away. I was in shock as I watched the helicopter that carried our first born child rise into the air.

Chapter 2

There’s a little club down South Highlands Avenue that’s known locally as Robert’s Gym—the more formal name is the Highlands Health and Racquet Club. The entrance to the gym is filled with pictures of Robert with his broad arms and rippling,bulbous physique. Tall trophies line the wall as a testament to his body building capabilities. Robert’s Gym is one of the local hangs for body builders and weightlifters. Robert is a pleasant fellow who can talk about weightlifting and muscle building, and the various stars in the body building world, for hours at a time. He has coached many clients into the winner’s circle. Body building and wrestling fit right into Sebring’s red-neck image. It’s not uncommon to see souped-up cars at the Sebring Diner—the flashiest neon eatery along Highway 27, which skirts the old town center. The NASCAR International Raceway is a main attraction for the red-neck crowd. Sebring’s streets are named after automobiles and automakers: Thunderbird Road, Peugeot Street, Corvette and Porsche Avenues, and Farrari Drive. It’s been said that the local Cattleman’s Association still harbors members of the Ku Klux Klan. Televisions throughout the community are frequently tuned to the World Wide Wrestling channel. The tough-guy image works well for law enforcement in the area. Former Sheriff Howie Godwin, who served Sebring from 1988 to 2004, had a devout following at the Highlands County Fairground as a professional wrestler during the time Matthew was beaten at Sebring Middle School. There used to be a key club at Robert’s Gym, where members of the Police and Sheriff Departments converged for after-hour workouts. Clem’s dad used to frequent the gym as a body builder, often with a teen in tow, to work out with the locals, I was told. Steroids are the drug of choice among the body building and weightlifting crowd, despite the fact that they’re a controlled substance, and possession and use of steroids is a first-class felony unless you have a prescription. At the Florida Body Building Championship in 1998, they “couldn’t find enough clean athletes to make a team for the Olympics because so many contestants were on steroids,” Robert Gilbert, owner of the gym, told a friend of mine. Neighboring Lakeland, Florida, had a huge steroids bust in 1995. There have been rumors of steroid use and busts among members of law enforcement right within Highlands County.

I know a fair amount about steroids because I was a drug-free weightlifter for many years. At one point I had to make the decision whether I was going to step up to the professional level. But I soon learned that taking that leap would immerse me in the world of steroids and other drugs. I was told that it would require a budget of $3,500 a month in drugs to be able to compete because all of the competitors were so pumped up. My family life was more important to me than the trophies. At the time I was lifting at the amateur level, I was told that the three or four lifters who beat me at the Southern States Nationals did so because they were on steroids. Steroids are mentally and physically addicting, and it’s just too tempting for men to keep taking them when they see themselves getting big and strong. But they’re illegal because they have dangerous side effects for adults, and for teenage boys, they’re lethal.. “They’re an accident waiting to happen,” says Robert, because they can triple teen hormones—causing them to become aggressive and unaware of their own strength. We’ll probably never know if Clem was playing around with illegal steroids on the day he let loose on Matthew. He sure acted like it. He was pumped up and totally irrational about his strength. He was on the fast track to becoming a top wrestler, had been introduced to a culture or clique of men who were encouraging his physical prowess, and word had it that Robert’s Gym had seen its share of steroid use. We didn’t know Clem and his family. We had heard from other parents in the community about how their children had been bullied by him as well. But one thing I do know from my research on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is that people who overreact and respond to situations with aggression often have been abused, or they have been rewarded inappropriately by peers or adults for their behaviors. On the day of the incident, Clem was paraded across the school yard and into a police car in handcuffs. He was booked for a misdemeanor at the Police Department for assault. Someone well-respected and well-connected in Highlands County on sports and youth issues told me the coach told him that he had protected Clem because “he was following the dictates of his father.” He then went on to divulge that Clem’s father “was involved closely with the former Sheriff’s Office.” Others I spoke with claimed the same thing. Clem received a mere five day suspension from school for beating our son within a few inches of death. He eventually was promoted to head of the wrestling team and made the local newspapers as a kid who was destined for state and

17 possibly national competitions. By comparison, our son experienced years of mental and physical anguish, never returned to public school, and never played on a junior high or high school sports team again. The Highlands County Sheriff’s Office and School Board began a well- orchestrated cover up shortly after the incident. The first to marginalize the triple beating was Sebring’s very own Middle School Principal Sandra Whidden. “Boys will be boys” she told us when we first began asking questions about what really happened during those 2 ½ hours of hell our son endured with not one whit of adult intervention. Matthew’s return home from two days in intensive care at Tampa General Hospital was shocking for the entire family. He was an entirely different child from the happy-go-lucky kid who had just made the football team. Our happy home seemed irreversibly disrupted. At times he acted irrational and exceedingly fearful. We were told that if he had another head injury within the year, it could result in death because of the rapid swelling. At this point, the locker room incident was the only one Carolyn and I had been told about. It wasn’t until after we returned from Tampa that we learned from Greg about the beating on the bus and from Matthew about the disturbing walk to the clinic. On Sept. 9, 2002, six days after the beating, I wrote a letter to the School Board of Highlands County asking them to take reasonable steps to protect our children and others at the school. “We have heard (hearsay) from other parents who [knew Clem and] commented on his behavior problems. We encourage you to investigate this matter thoroughly before allowing him back into the school system. We are requesting copies of any and all reports immediately or as soon as they become available, including the video tape on the school bus…. In closing, we as parents are deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of our children while in the care of your school. I would like to express my concerns regarding our security measures and make suggestions for improvements so that this kind of incident will not be imposed on any other child.” We received no response to our letter and limited response with our requests to meet with school district personnel. No one wanted to be accountable for the tragedy our family had experienced. Much as any parent would do, we began to ask questions of the school district, law enforcement, and anyone who would listen.

“Why was our son severely beaten three times in the span of 2 ½ hours at a public school to the point where he had to be flight lifted to a major hospital?” “Why didn’t the boys get sent to the principal’s office and nurse’s station after the fight on the bus?” “Why wasn’t an adult in or near the locker room to break up the fight?” “Why did our son have to walk the length of a football field to be accosted again and again by the person who had beaten him twice before?” “Why was he carried by school district personnel to Carolyn’s car when he couldn’t walk?” “If he was in such bad shape that he had to be carried, why wasn’t an ambulance called from the nurse’s station to take our son to the Emergency Room?” “Why did Clem only receive five days of detention when our son could have been killed?” The school offered few responses to our many questions and limited help because they were in such denial. Fear of a lawsuit was of greater concern to them and the School Committee than the health and recovery of our son. So we turned to the Sheriff’s Resource Officer, Jonathan Doyle, who was our neighbor, and Police Resource Officer Milbrecht for answers. They sent us to Lieutenant Susan Benton at the Sheriff’s Office, who I was told had 20 years of experience as a resource officer. She bounced us back to Doyle and Milbrecht, and we were bounced between the three of them like a ping-pong ball without any answers. The only person who listened to our concerns was Captain Bobbie Lee of the Sheriff’s Office, but in the end, he never did anything. We never made it into Sheriff Godwin’s office. Finally, out of frustration, I turned to Attorney Peter Estrada of the State Attorney’s Office. After I expressed my outrage at what had happened to our son and Clem’s meager punishment, he told me I needed to stop raising questions and stirring up trouble. He refused to charge Clem with a third battery and stalking charge, and a five-day suspension remained his punishment. However, he did show me the seating arrangement that day on the bus that had Clem seated nine rows back from Matthew. Meanwhile, when Matthew got home after his three days at Tampa General Hospital, we had to stay by his side continually because of the mental and physical damage he incurred. During that time, not a single neighbor brought us a casserole nor sent Matthew or the family a card.

The change in Matthew happened so fast, it was like turning off a light switch. He suffered from damaged self-esteem, nightmares, suicide attempts, continuous crying, long-term vision problems, terrors, paranoia, depression, and bizarre behaviors. He sometimes foamed at the mouth and went into psychotic states. We couldn’t walk behind Matthew because he startled so badly. His neurological abilities were so compromised, he had difficulty running to the mailbox. If airplanes buzzed the house, he shook uncontrollably. When some sheriff’s office deputies constructed a shooting range on an abutting property, he bolted with each shot. It took 9 months before he left the house, and when he did, he experienced panic attacks every time he saw a yellow school bus. I have great compassion for what our troops have endured overseas, and the challenges they face when they return. I’ve experienced first-hand, with my son, wife, and myself, the damaging effects of trauma that can result in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD, as it’s commonly called, is an anxiety disorder resulting from a life-threatening event. It can seriously disrupt the lives of those who suffer from it, and those around them, until it’s brought under control. That can take years. Matthew became socially withdrawn with a broken heart, mind, and spirit. It took five to six years of constant support and the care of family, friends, multiple physicians, and therapists to rebuild him—mentally and physically. He lost his self- esteem, and it took years for him to regain it. We had no health insurance. The bills continued to pile up. The following year, the 10th Judicial Circuit Court for Highlands County Juvenile Division ordered Clem’s family to pay $20,077.47 in restitution for Matthew’s medical care in the aftermath of the beating. But we never received the money because Clem’s mother claimed they were too poor to pay. The more we pressed for answers, the more misery knocked at our door. Two weeks after Matthew was injured, I was running my printing presses out in the shop when Gary Lower, code enforcer for Highlands County, made a surprise visit. He informed me that he was following up on an anonymous complaint that I was violating a 40-year-old code of ordinance created in 1962: operating a commercial business from a shop that was detached from the house. We had operated our business from that outbuilding for seven years without incident and had been paying business taxes the entire time. But to fit the criterion, the shop needed to be attached to the house. Because Mr. Lower threatened to slap me with a fine, I had to move my printing presses into the livingroom where Carolyn

20 had been homeschooling the children until the safety issues with Matthew were resolved with Sebring Middle School. Lower returned several weeks later and slapped me with a second code violation that required taking down a preexisting shed. He is a personal friend of the present sheriff, Susan Benton, and the godparent to her children. During the time of Lower’s visits, we were on a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week suicide watch. Carolyn had the hardest job. For three years she was up two and three times a night with Matthew as he wrestled with night terrors. While I ran the printing presses and farmed, she homeschooled Matthew and managed homebound program visits from the school. We spent hours of our time running him around to neurological, eye, and therapy appointments. The doctors said he had experienced the equivalent of two strokes. His perfect vision was so compromised that he went from being able to read a Harry Potter book in three days to stumbling over a sentence of words. We witnessed Matthew walking into a wall more than once because his vision became so distorted. He needed to wear corrective, eye-strengthening glasses for 36 months. Operating the printing presses from the living room significantly added to our stressful circumstances. It also made the teacher home visits challenging. We eventually cancelled the visits the following May after we discovered Matthew’s folder was full of daily medical notations such as “blurred vision,” “headaches,” and “nightmares.” The teacher had been asking Matthew about his health when we weren’t present, which is a violation of our rights since he was a minor. We then began homeschooling the boys ourselves with the help of friends. The following fall, we placed them at Grace Academy—a private Baptist school. Thanks to the Florida Department of Education’s McKay Scholarships school choice program, we were able to place Matthew in a private school at no cost. The McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program provided Florida students with special needs the opportunity to attend a participating private school. It was a life saver for us. Meanwhile, one of our neighbors, Rob Owen, began building an airplane runway along our property line without a permit. The construction caused major drainage problems for our road, which was impassable at times due to his freshly dug drainage ditches that pitched into the road that led to our driveway. We were located at the end of the road, and sometimes a foot of water accumulated there after a storm. When we used the front entrance, we had to park our car ½ mile up the road

21 and carry the children through the flooded area back and forth to the house. Our groceries or mail and packages had to be wheel-barrowed through the water. When we in turn dug ditches to pitch the water away from the road, our other neighbors complained. A lawyer suggested that I raise concerns with the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), a regional governmental agency. They came out shortly thereafter, inspected the area, and suggested I take photographs. In a letter dated Oct. 23, 2002, Robert A. Dasta of the SFWMD wrote a letter to Dr. Owen detailing the violations found during an Oct. 9 inspection. “This area is still elevated above historical grades and the ditches still exist. It appears these ditches are still creating a point source discharge to off-site properties where runoff historically maintained a sheet flow runoff pattern. Please provide the District written documentation within 15 days from the date of this letter that the above-referenced items have been addressed.” The SFWMD eventually fined Owen $9,300 for building a runway without a permit that created drainage problems, and then slapped him with a two-year construction moratorium. He also was required to cover up the ditches. Owen then hired the same lawyers that the Highlands County School Board uses and applied for a formal permit with the Highlands County Zoning Board of Adjustment. We continued to push for accountability, apologies, and answers from the school district and Sheriff’s Office. Then our animals started to die mysteriously around the property. W e began to wonder about the possibility that retaliation was taking place. We lost 8 animals in the span of 9 months. The first fatality was our Labrador. Matthew, Greg, and I came home one day to find Boscow dead in the road with a bullet in his head. Carolyn had worked at several Veterinary Clinics over 15 years, and when I found our dog Tina dead in the bushes next, Carolyn was convinced she had been poisoned. Our pet bull, Taurus, met the same fate as Boscow—we found him in the southeast corner pasture with a bullet above one eye. He had been a wonderful pet and was so tame the children rode around on his back. His mother had shunned him because he was a runt, or adobe, and he was only a few days old when we got him. The boys fed him with a baby bottle every day, and he became part of the family. Carolyn will never forget when we came home one day to find that Taurus had eaten all of our clothes off of the clothes line!

One of our greatest losses was Lulu, a pot belly pig we had adopted from the local animal shelter when her owner was forced to give her away because she lived in town. Lulu would do anything for a grape. Carolyn didn’t like it when she came into the house, but we occasionally found her in the shower or on the couch. One day I found her in her pen ripped to shreds. As the number of pets that died continued to grow, Carolyn and I began to get scared. We warned the children more frequently about strangers and kept a watchful eye on them when they went outside. Some might have called us “paranoid.” But we were just being wise. It was particularly troubling when our children found their pets dead. One of them found their beloved cat hanging on a fence. Another cat was found dead shortly thereafter of apparent poisoning. Then our meat pig was found dead in his pen, again, from apparent poisoning. Cowboy, our other Labrador, was the last animal we found dead, He was a good distance from the property on the side of the road, and it was unclear what he died from. I asked Doug Moon, our neighbor, how far away Cowboy was found from our property. He responded with only one sentence: “It’s amazing what McDonald’s french fries will do.” Around that time, it wasn’t uncommon to find nails strewn across our access road. We did a lot of tire changing, which was expensive on our tight budget. We were constantly bothered by planes buzzing within 30 or 40 feet of our house. Three or four nights a week, we endured the sound of planes dive bombing the house and flying so low that we eventually identified them with the help of our video camera. We traced them back to Owen and the airport mechanic for the Sheriff Office’s planes. My father was visiting on Father’s Day when a plane flew so low our pines shook. As the pilot pulled up over the trees, my Dad, who had been in Korea, hit the ground! I took the videos of the planes dive bombing our house down to the Sheriff’s Office and showed them to Capt. Paul Blackman along with a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration that documented our complaints. The deputy lowered his head, looked at the ground, and mumbled “Bobbie, I’ve got a mortgage to pay, too.” I knew what he meant. He knew we were being harassed, he probably knew who was behind it, and he knew that his job was on the line if he did anything about it. Meanwhile, a group of men set up a shooting range next door and did target practice on the weekends. One day we obtained a license plate number on a jeep that

23 was parked nearby and traced it back to the Sheriff’s Office. It was some of the same men I recognized from the shooting range—the General Counsel for the Sheriff’s Office, Michael Durham, and one of the deputies. The noise of the guns and airplanes was particularly disturbing for Matthew, who had taken to closing his door and darkening his room. During that time he attempted suicide with an overdose of Tylenol. So when the Zoning Board of Adjustment held a hearing on Oct. 13, 2004, to consider a special exception in agriculture zoning to allow an airplane runway for Owen, I made every effort to block it. Owen was claiming he needed a 2,162-foot-long landing strip for an airplane that needed only 100 feet, according to an article in the Highlands Today newspaper. Owen owned a larger Cessna 310, which he sometimes housed in a hangar on his property. Several people objected to the length of the runway and raised questions about whether the Cessna would eventually land and take off from the strip. I consulted with an employee at the Federal Aviation Administration, who told me that low flying planes over our home would be invading our airspace. “The 2,100-foot runway is overkill for such a small airplane,” I told the Board at the meeting. “It will negatively affect my plan to break my land into five-acre plots for my four boys. Who would want to build a home under that?” While 14 property owners supported the plan, 3 were opposed. The Board was convinced by the opposition’s arguments, and the motion to deny the permit passed 4 to 3. Two weeks later, Carolyn arrived home with a car full of groceries and decided to use the back entrance to the property because the road at the front entrance was damaged by flooding. To her dismay, she found a makeshift wire fence strewn across our right-of-way, which ran through our neighbor’s land. We had been using that rear entrance unobstructed for nine years because the right of way was designated as part of our deed. Carolyn left my mother in the car, climbed under the fence with one of our sons, and walked the mile to our house to get my help. When I arrived at the egress point, I looked over the fence and determined it would be necessary to cut a chain that secured the chicken-wire fence to a post. I grabbed a pair of channel locks, snipped the chain, wound the fence up to set it at the side of the road, and Carolyn drove the car through the entryway.

“You’re going to jail, you’re going to jail!” rang through the neighborhood. Connie Moon, our abutting neighbor, was dancing on her front porch yelling at us and taking pictures of me cutting the fence. Shortly thereafter, Jonathan Doyle, her next-door neighbor who also was the Sheriff Office resource officer on the day our son was beaten at Sebring Middle School, walked up and joined her on the porch. I was clueless at the time as to what Connie was yelling about. Two weeks after the fence incident, six Sheriff’s Office cars with a K-9 unit roared into our driveway at nearly midnight to awaken the entire household. Several Sheriff’s Office deputies were at the door when I answered it in my pajamas. One by one, my wife and children rose out of bed and gathered behind me. “Step outside, Mr. Bean. You’re under arrest.” A deputy approached me with his hand on his gun while another crouched by the window with his gun aimed at me. “Are you Bobbie Bean with the birth date December 8th?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied. I suddenly felt the cold tip of a gun pushing up against the back of my head from the officer who had been crouching by the window. Another deputy snapped some handcuffs around my wrists. As they walked me to the cruiser, I looked behind me. My family was clustered in the doorway, disbelief and fear stamped across their faces. Matthew was pacing back and forth crying. “Can I use the bathroom?” I asked one of the officers. He grabbed my waist and yanked my pajama bottoms down to my ankles, exposing me to my entire family. “Go!” he ordered, as the group of seven deputies broke into laughter. It was the most humiliating moment in my life. My entire family had witnessed what could be considered the equivalent of a psychological rape. The experience intensified the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that has clouded my life since the moment I kicked in the hospital door with Matthew’s unconscious body in my arms. Carolyn and Matthew quickly threw a shirt and boots out the door so that I would have some additional clothing. But I was booked in my night shorts. Ironically, I had no idea what I was being arrested for. It wasn’t until my booking took place at 1:06 a.m. at the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office that I learned the “heinous” crime I’d allegedly committed that resulted in a massive arrest and the threat of a year’s jail time—cutting a fence and allegedly letting a cow out.

Chapter 3

On Sept. 26, 2010, Walter Jesse Nutt of Polk County, Florida, was booked for breaking or injuring a fence, possession of a deadly weapon with intent to kill, burglary, and grand theft of an automobile, among other charges. Cutting a fence for Walter clearly fell into the category of “criminal mischief,” or worse, in relation to his apparent motives to commit more serious offenses. On Nov. 16, 2004, I, Bobbie Jessie Bean of Highlands County, was booked for breaking or injuring a fence and “criminal mischief.” But there was nothing criminal about it. I cut the recently constructed, makeshift fence to regain access to the same easement my wife and family had been using for the last nine years. The ice cream and other frozen groceries were melting in my wife’s car, which had been sitting in the hot Florida sun for close to an hour. My mother’s health was at risk: She also had been sitting in a hot car for close to an hour because the air conditioning was broken. Up until the day I got arrested for cutting a fence, I didn’t know Florida State Stature 810.115 even existed. The law states:

(1) Whoever willfully and maliciously breaks down, mars, injures, defaces, cuts, or otherwise creates or causes to be created an opening, gap, interruption, or break in any fence, or any part thereof, belonging to or enclosing land not his or her own, or whoever causes to be broken down, marred, injured, defaced, or cut any fence belonging to or enclosing land not his or her own, commits a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083. A person who commits a second or subsequent offense under this subsection commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. (2) If the offender breaks or injures a fence as provided in subsection (1) and the fence or any part thereof is used to contain animals at the time of the offense, the offender commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. (3) The court may require full compensation to the owner of the fence for any and all damages or losses resulting directly or indirectly from the act or commission pursuant to s. 775.089.

It’s debatable whether the makeshift fence across the egress was “belonging to or enclosing land not his or her own,” because technically, an easement is considered community property. A worker at the Highlands County Animal Control office says its commonplace for law enforcement to receive calls about cows wandering outside their designated pasture because of a break in the fence. She estimates she has logged some 70,000 “Cow Out” calls into the log books during the 15 years she has worked there. Yet she can’t recall a single time someone has been arrested for cutting a fence and letting a cow loose—except Bobbie Bean. “You have to catch them in the act,” she told someone investigating my story. No wonder why Mrs. Moon had her camera ready to snap pictures of Carolyn and me trying to regain access to the road we had been using for nine year. Mrs. Moon and Deputy Doyle then may have lured the Moon’s cows with a bucket of feed out of the pasture and down the road to the neighbor’s house. That way they could make the additional claim that I had let five cows out, which was a more serious offense that could result in a year’s jail time. The real crime probably was committed by our neighbors: Collusion and entrapment. I believe Florida is the only state in the nation that considers breaking a fence and letting a cow out a criminal act punishable by a year in jail. The law is nearly 100 years old and dates back to the 1920s. Here are a few other archaic Florida laws still on the books: Having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal. (Ouch. I promise I will never touch a porcupine.) Unmarried women are prohibited from parachuting on Sunday or they risk arrest, fine, and/or jail. You may not kiss your wife’s breasts. (I’m guilty as sin on this one, but I managed to evade arrest.) You are not allowed to break more than three dishes per day, or chip the edges of more than four cups and/or saucers. (If you do, 50 lashes with a wet noodle.) If an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle. (I will remember this one when I trade my truck in for cheaper transportation.) Men may not be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown. (The gay rights activists should work to have this removed from the books.) It is illegal to skateboard without a license. (Minors take notice.)

But around the Sheriff’s Office, my arrest was no joke. I was treated like a criminal—they fingerprinted me, took a mug shot, and locked me up in a cell with some guys who were accused of drug dealing. Carolyn depleted our savings account to pay the $250 bail at around 2 a.m. We were down to our last $4 in our savings account. My mother-in-law wired us some money that night to help us put food on the table and gas in the truck for the week. When we paid the bail bondsman, he burst into laughter when he read the charges against me. “Son,” he said as he leaned back in his chair and took a puff of his cigar, “I’ve heard of hog thieves, horse thieves, just about everything in my 40 years as a bail bondsman in Highlands, Polk, and Hardee Counties, but I’ve never heard of this one!” We returned home that night, but I barely slept. The events of the day kept spinning through my mind as I tried to make sense of what had happened. When I chatted about our experiences with another bail bondsman who was a friend, he told me that it was impossible for a family to have had so many crises at one time. The onslaught seemed endless. It was obvious that the attacks were orchestrated. The beginning of our very worst problems began the following day when I walked into Gator Title with all of my land deeds. Amazingly, three key people to my case were sitting in the office: Alistar Ibrahim, the owner of Gator Title who closed on our land deal; Attorney Robert Keogh of Keogh & DuBose law firm; Mike Brown, a resource officer at the Sheriff’s Office who was Deputy Doyle’s superior. When Gator Title did our title search, it arranged for the easement with the help of the previous property owner—the well-known and well-respected Payne family. They also owned the parcel that eventually became the Moon’s land. I first met Doug Moon when I hired him to do some digging on our property with his excavator, and I introduced him to our realtor and the Paynes. Several years later, Doug and Connie Moon bought the parcel that abuts ours and built a house on it. There was never any question about our rights to the easement until that outrageous day. When I laid my deeds out on the table in front of Alister, Robert, and Mike at the Gator Title office that morning, I told them the arrest was retaliation for speaking out about Owen’s runway and because we were considering a negligence lawsuit against the school district. The conversation eventually led to hiring Attorney Keough to address my arrest charges. He convinced me that the charge was a serious federal offense, and I could spend a year in prison. He then convinced me that with

28 his help and extensive contacts, the charges could be dropped. He also offered to represent us in a lawsuit against the school district later on down the road. Since we were strapped for cash, I was offered a deal in Alister’s office by Mike Brown, who seemed so kind and willing to help at the time. I arranged to sell him my 17 cows to obtain enough money for a retainer and to start the legal defense. Attorney Keough and I met again a week later. I shared with him, among other items, all of Matthew’s records. What he failed to tell me at the time was that he had an “ongoing relationship with the State of Florida and represented various state agencies through State risk management program.” That’s what he wrote me much later in a letter dated Oct. 7, 2007, when we approached him for representation in a lawsuit against the school district over Matthew’s beating. “In that regard, we routinely represent various state attorneys offices, public defenders offices, and other constitutional officers. Therefore, we would have a conflict of interest bringing any action against an officer or employees of the State of Florida, including officers or employees of the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office or officers or employees of the State Attorney’s Office for the Tenth Judicial Circuit, and we must decline to represent your interests in any such action.” That attorney took our best cows in exchange for a retainer and some legal defense while the Sheriff’s Office officer who oversaw Jonathan Doyle (a school resource officer at the time of our son’s beating, and our neighbor who assisted Mrs. Moon in the fence incident) sat by his side. Then Attorney Keough decided later on that he could not represent me in any actions against “an officer or employees of the State of Florida.” If Keough & DuBose couldn’t represent us because of a conflict of interest with the school district matter, then they shouldn’t have represented me in the fence episode. They failed to disclose their relationship with state agencies to me at that time. In fact, they should have declined representation based on their relationship with the Sheriff’s Office and Florida Department of Education. Under the circumstances, Attorney Keough never should have looked at Matthew’s records. Because we were financially strapped due to extensive medical bills resulting from Matthew’s injuries, Keough told me we would need to put all 30 acres up for sale to pay the legal and medical bills. We signed a promissory note for the entire property, including the house. But someone in town told us that 10 acres would be enough to cover our legal bills and some other pressing expenses, and thank goodness, we demanded to have the note annulled.

Alister, Sheriff Susan Benton’s granddaughter, and the daughter of former code enforcer Lower all offered low bids on the 10-acre parcel. We finally sold half of it to a local doctor, who I learned later was Alister’s friend. The remaining five- acre parcel was put up for absolute auction by Alistar’s father, Dr. George Ibrahim, and was sold to a friend of Dr. Ronald Owen—the neighbor who was denied a runway permit. Some of Owen’s relatives also bid on the remaining five acres, which sold for significantly less than the first five acres. The sale of the land allowed us to pay our first wave of debts. But there were additional medical expenses for Matthew that came later. At various times, we had four judgments or liens against our property from medical organizations pressing us to pay the bills. The medical expenses were supposed to be picked up by Clem’s family, who claimed they were too poor to pay them. We will always be grateful to the Florida Attorney General’s Division of Victim Services, which eventually stepped in and paid for the helicopter airlift to Tampa General Hospital. But we were responsible for the rest. Victim Services also had us sign a promissory note allowing them to take a percentage of anything we won in a future lawsuit against the school district. The medical bills relating to Matthew’s injuries were excessive. They totaled well over $50,000. Those calculations didn’t include the amount of time we spent caring for Matthew, which cut into our income. I lost my biggest printing account during the time we were so busy caring for him and putting out fires in the neighborhood and town. I had to go to court because of my arrest, and at that time, various documents surfaced relating to the fence incident. It turned out that on the day of the makeshift fence incident, both Carolyn and the Moons called the Sheriff’s Office, and Deputy Ludden met us at the egress point and documented the events: “On 10/30/2004 at approx. 1609 hrs., I, C. Ludden, arrived at 198 Nursery Rd. where I met with Bobbie Bean who advised me that his neighbors had placed a gate upon the easement so he had come down with a pair of channel locks and cut the gate and torn it down and set it to the side so his wife could pass through to their property. He had then gotten into verbal argument with Connie Moon and she had called him a “Bastard” in front of his kids. Bean wanted me to go tell the Moon’s they were in the wrong putting a gate up on the easement. I then met with Doug and Connie Moon who advised me that they had gone to the proper County Office and inquired about gating the easement so that they might

30 let their cows out into their front yard to graze. They would open the gate at other times as long as the cows weren’t grazing in the front. The Moon’s were advised that it was legal for them to do that as long as Bean still had passage. The Moons advised that the gate would not be locked, only closed because the cows would not push the gate open. Connie actually witnessed Bean destroying the fence, allowing the cows, who had been in the front grazing, to get loose and go to the neighbor’s property. I was shown the cut fence and the boards that had been ripped down and the fence laying to the side. The Moon’s advised that they did wish to pursue charges against Bean for cutting and tearing down their fence and allowing their cows to be set free.” In an court affidavit written later by Deputy Ludden, he described the events this way: “Bean started by telling me that Moon had place[d] a chicken wire gate up and had it stretched across the road and secured with a chain, which when his wife tried to get in she could not, so his wife called him. The gate was constructed in a way that it required cutting the chain to open the means of egress, although, technically, there was no lock on the gate.” What the report failed to mention is that the Moons never had the courtesy to call our home or stop by to let us know they were constructing a fence at the egress point. (It was not a gate, it was a chicken-wire fence chained and definitely locked to a fence post.) Mrs. Moon apparently had her camera ready to snap a picture when Carolyn arrived with the car. Yet the prosecuting attorney in my case, Stephen Houchin, decided to go for maximum penalty against me with no plea bargain. He dropped the charges in 2005 shortly after Carolyn was bitten by two of the Moon’s dogs when she was opening the Moon’s new gate to the easement. I think he was beginning to see that it was nothing more than a nasty neighborhood dispute. The Moons were required to get rid of their Chow, which is considered a dangerous dog, and their insurance rates went up. In exchange for dropping the charges, I was required to sign a release form stating that I wouldn’t open any future lawsuits against the Moons in relation to the gate incident. I was barred from coming in contact with the Moons for 18 months, which meant I could no longer use the easement. Carolyn stopped using it as well because it was too difficult for her to open the multiple gates that had replaced the chicken-wire fence. Again, the chain on the gate was so tight, Carolyn couldn’t unhook it. The back entrance also had served as an entryway to my small nursery

31 where I sold palms and other trees. The triple gates discouraged my customer base, and I eventually had to close the nursery down. Around the time the charges against me were dropped, Matthew finally set aside his prism glasses, which he had worn for 3 years to exercise his eyes and restore his vision. But he continued to “present with classical symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” according to an extensive neuropsychology examination. He starting working at age 18 but had to quit five jobs in the service industry because they were “all very stressful,” according to the report. I remember one incident when he worked at Sonny’s Barbecue as a waiter. He was threatened by a customer for laying the plate down on the table too hard. “The customer told him that if he put the plate down hard again, he would hit him,” the neuropsychology examination report stated. Apparently the incident caused Matthew so much anxiety and distress that he waited in the restaurant for several hours after his shift ended and was convinced the customer left the area. He quit the next day, according to the report. Fortunately, Grace Baptist School was a gentle, Christian environment for Matthew to transition back into socializing with his peers. The school staff was very patient with his PTSD episodes, and he was able to attend the private school through twelfth grade. If Matthew had too many tasks to do, he would explode at school. Dr. Roberts, the principal, and the school staff were exceptionally patient and guided Matthew through some of his worst episodes. Meanwhile, we continued to look for answers and ways to change the system in relation to the unethical and sometimes vicious way Highlands County handled our situation. In 2004, I started to go to the statehouse in Tallahassee in search of solutions. It was there that I met Dick Hollahan, a lobbyist for children’s rights who became a close friend and guide. Mr. Hollahan introduced me to many helpful people, politicians, and aides. But the most important person he put me in contact with was Debbie Johnston in 2006. A mother and school teacher from Cape Coral, Debbie’s son, Jeffrey, had committed suicide that summer after being repeatedly bullied and cyber bullied for three years by a classmate. She was as determined as we were to find answers to why such repeat bullying had happened at a public school. At the same time that I was lobbying the Florida Senate, Debbie was pushing for accountability on the Florida House floor. From that association came new contacts with a coalition of

Florida parents and students pushing for change on the issue of bullying, cyber bullying, and harassment in public schools. When children get hurt or end up dead from a violent act, parents tend to obsess on what can be done to prevent such circumstances from occurring again or happening to other people’s children. When we worked with this group, we found ourselves surrounded by activists determined to make a difference. It was therapeutic for our family: In addition to finding others who shared our motives and concerns, we were wrestling with how to deal with Matthew’s multiple suicide attempts. We collectively turned every stone and brainstormed on what could be done. It eventually became clear to us what needed to happen—Florida needed an anti- bullying safe schools law. Without a comprehensive anti-bullying bill, it was too easy for Florida’s schools to turn a blind eye and allow their responsibility to slip through the cracks. Debbie built a website in honor of her son (www.JeffreyJohnston.org) to bring greater awareness to the problem of bullying in Florida’s schools and to educate the public about the need for a new law. On the website, she wrote the following words about her son: “For three years, he was the target of a relentless bully, both in school and online. Throughout it all, Jeff never retaliated with words or actions, and never gave up trying to make peace. In the end, it was the loss of faith in himself that led him to give in to despair. In a final note to those he left behind he wrote “Dreams are only dreams, and the world cannot change no matter how hard you try....”” We were determined to change the world for Jeffery and make a dream come true for all of Florida’s children who had been vulnerable to bullying for several decades because school district personnel weren’t required to do anything about it. This was a civil rights issue for us. It was grounded in the belief that children have a fundamental right to feel safe in their schools free from harassment, and bullying violates that right. House Bill (HB) 699 became known as the Jeffrey Johnston Stand up for All Students Act, and Debbie managed to get Rep. Nick Thompson (R) of Ft. Myers, Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff (R) of Ft. Lauderdale, and Rep. Gary Aubuchon (R) of Cape Coral to sponsor the bill. Sen. Carey Baker (R) of Lake County sponsored the bill on the Senate floor.

HB 699 prohibits “Bullying or harassment of any student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution” on public school grounds or on a school bus during school hours or via the computer network of a public K-12 educational institution. School districts also are required to report all bullying incidents. Many other states have drafted similar bills over the last few years, but Florida led the way. Florida’s bill HB699 was the final legal document that started to be crafted in 1990s. It went through many transitions and Senators, partially because the homosexual rights movement wanted preferential treatment on the bullying issue for gay children because they get picked on the most. This slowed down the process of passage significantly, held the bill up for several years, and it was never incorporated into the bill. There were four attempts on the floor before the bill finally passed in the House of Representatives in 2007. We faced a greater challenge in the Senate. It took three long years of our lobbying for HB 699 before it became law. During that time, countless numbers of children endured the kind of harassment and bullying that Matthew and Jeffrey experienced in school. I lobbied Congress in Tallahassee over eight times to encourage passage of the bill. I hired an advertising agency, and they spent 38 hours putting together a glossy brochure called “Shattered Dreams” about our experience in Sebring and the problem of bullying. It cost close to $16,000 to produce. Crooks Printing in Hollywood, Florida, pulled together a coalition of people from Artrageous Advertising, the Miami University Hurricanes football team, and the Miami Dolphins to pick up the production costs. For 18 months I travelled back and forth to Tallahassee and walked the streets with a bag slung over my shoulder passing out copies of the brochure to politicians, civil servants, and anyone else who would take one. I gave copies to Charlie Crist, who was Attorney General at the time, and the janitor at the statehouse on the same day. I even propped one up on a urinal in a bathroom at the statehouse for a politician who always seemed too busy to take one in the hallway. During that time we passed out brochures to every Senator, congressional representative, and aide. Around this time, Carolyn and I were turned down when we tried to get the support of House representative Denise Grimsley, a former teacher from Sebring who came from the influential Ben Hill-Griffin family. When Hollihan heard about the rejection, he made a personal visit to Grimsley’s office and gained her support instantly. That was the kind of guy Hollihan was: He dated so far back at the

34 statehouse in Tallahassee that he could recall when the buildings were constructed and had no elevators. When my family joined me in the lobbying efforts, we made it an educational outing for the children. We packed lunches and dinners, stayed overnight in a motel room, and visited all of the tourist attractions in the Capitol. The children passed out brochures, too. When I spoke before the House and Senate, my family was always by my side coaching me on. Their support was invaluable and kept me focused and motivated to push so hard at the state level for four years. Whenever I told Matthew’s story, I could see the audience’s eyes well up with tears. His story indisputably proved that there was a gaping hole in the system through which too many children were falling and getting hurt—and sometimes even killed. Meanwhile, Debbie and her coalition were working hard on getting proxies, lobbying politicians, and revising the bill so that it would pass in the legislature. The Teacher’s Union threw a monkey wrench in the works several times. The politicians had to negotiate the specifics of the bill behind closed doors in an effort to accommodate various special interest groups, state agencies such as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, The Florida Bar, and the Department of Education. I learned a great deal about the legal process during that time and how legislation becomes law. I watched how HB 699 got watered down and emasculated. We were told from multiple corners that the bill would pass with flying colors on the last day of the 2007 House session. But at the last minute, a decision was made to hear a bill about the Florida State Pie instead. Limes are big business with Florida fruit growers, and our group of about 25 people watched in horror from the sidelines as various politicians debated how many egg whites the recipe for key lime pie should include for the meringue. We had worked so hard for the last two years getting to this point only to watch the clock run out, the gavel hit the podium, and the 2007 session expire. Debbie cried. My heart sank deep into my gut. We realized that we would need to start over yet again with the long, arduous task of recrafting the bill and lobbying in the 2008 session. I knew we had to go back to the 2008 session, but I would have to take care of a little damage control first. There were some hard feelings on the floor from a prior

35 episode where I was tapped on the shoulder one morning while getting on an elevator going to the fourth floor of the capital building. I was told that Debbie Johnson was organizing a silent protest to disturb Senator Wise’s committee. I was told to stay off the fourth floor and not to become involved in the protest. I found out later that this would become counterproductive. The coalition began bullying Senator Wise for his lack of enthusiasm, and when the media finally got a hold of the story, they became relentless and ultimately threw him to the wolves. I was later urged by Capital News to issue a public apology to Senator Wise. This move became unnerving because I really had nothing to do with this whole incident, but I felt compelled because of the status of the bill. As I was getting ready for the 2008 session, damage control during the 2007 session was very important if this was going to be successful. So, I eventually went on public TV and apologized to Senator Wise whom I have learned to respect and trust.

Chapter 4

Carolyn and I continued to ask for answers back at home in Sebring as to how a child could be beaten three times at a public school without procedural intervention. Remember, none of the children involved were called into the principal’s office, sent home, or had their parent’s contacted before Matthew was beaten three times into numbness and had to be flight lifted to Tampa Hospital. There was no accountability from the school district, Sheriff’s Office, Police Department, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). To the contrary, some of these agencies seemed to enjoy placing landmines in our path. I eventually learned on my own that school district policy required that children who fight on the bus be suspended for three days—both sides, right or wrong. A group of school district personnel and bus company employees did not follow protocol. They claimed there was none in place. Matthew was not sent to the nurse’s office after the bus incident, neither boy was sent to the principal’s office, and they were released to first period gym class with very few questions asked. That injurious decision impacted countless numbers of people—from parents to hospital personnel to law enforcement to our legislators on the floor in Tallahassee. But most of all, that decision impacted my family in ways that none of us has fully recovered from. It was the beginning of the long and painful shattering of our American Dream. One of the greatest insults and injuries to our family was the denial of our right to know what really happened. We still didn’t have all of the answers in 2006—four years later. Many of our public officials were too busy politicking and greasing the hands of cronies to find time for the systemic problems that led to our son nearly being killed. Our expectation was that the Sheriff’s Office would interview school district personnel on why safety protocols were not followed. But no one wanted to take the heat or pin failure on another public official or the corrupt system. In that county, that public official could be your brother, cousin, or son. You can bet that they schemed about our case at Saturday night dinner parties. Meanwhile, one of the biggest blows we experienced took place before we filed a lawsuit against the school district. Glades Electric improperly installed a transformer in our neighborhood. It destroyed plugged-in electrical appliances, computers, air conditioners, and other equipment in 19 homes. Our house took the

37 hardest financial hit. In addition to our toaster, TV, and refrigerator, we had expensive printing equipment plugged into our electrical outlets. Glades Electric settled with all of the neighbors within a week. I was told verbally that my printing equipment would be replaced within two weeks. But the days stretched into weeks and months. My customers were knocking on my door, but the electric company failed to return my phone calls. I lost business by the truckloads. Glades Electric dragged out the lawsuit any way they could. It took four years for my platemaker and printer to be replaced when our lawsuit was finally settled— it was the exact figure we agreed upon four years earlier. It required filing a lawsuit against the electric company giant. Fortunately, my old, archaic printing press was unplugged in the corner when the disaster took place. It didn’t have the same printing and image-making capabilities as the lost equipment, but it allowed me to put food on the table until the electric company was forced by the court to hand me a check. We ate a lot of rice and beans and pancakes for dinner during that time. Three men from the Sunridge Baptist Church helped lessen our load by bringing us two boneless hams for the holidays. We had never needed nor received charitable donations before, and we’ll never forget their generosity and kindness. Matthew was attending South Florida Community College, and we had difficulty paying for the tuition and books. The Avon Park Boys and Girls Club came forward and donated $750 to Matthew’s college account. Gabe Reed, a club chairman, former teacher, and staunch advocate on anti-bullying and truancy issues, dug into his own wallet and donated to Matthew’s college costs. Far greater than the equipment loss was the loss of our clients and family harmony. The stress from our financial strains amplified throughout our household. Guess who was president of Glades Electric at that time? Sheriff Benton’s dad, Jack Cox. Early on in our experience I went to County Commissioner Guy Maxey for help. No wonder why he gave us marginal advice and help. Turned out he, too, was related to Sheriff Benton. We didn’t know it at the time, but we eventually learned that Sebring had a powerful good-old-boy network partly comprised of relatives in the school district, law enforcement, county code enforcement, commissioners, press, and attorneys. They worked and socialized together, and they controlled the town. This wasn’t apparent to us when we first moved to Sebring. But as the harassment toward us began to build, we could see that townspeople in key positions

38 and our neighbors were so closely knit together that the deck was stacked against us from the very day we moved onto our property as the newcomers. It was a form of nepotism. I believe our experience with the inept and inappropriate handling of our crisis by county and state officials holds clues as to what’s gone wrong in America. We were so unhappy with the handling of our case by the Sheriff’s Office that I filed a complaint with John King of the FDLE, who lived in Sebring and was a former Sheriff’s Office employee. I also tried to file a complaint with Detective Fox of the State Attorney’s office. Ironically, King and Fox lived across the street from each other, and neither did anything about my complaint. I discovered that King never turned my complaint into the Ft. Myers FDLE office. So I stopped into the Tallahassee FDLE office of Commissioner Baily because I was in the neighborhood lobbying for the Jeffrey Johnston Act. They brushed me off there, too. In the fall of 2006, we sent four separate letters to the Sheriff’s Office requesting an arbitration meeting and “any and all documents” relating to Matthew’s beatings. They had no record of the first assault on the bus (they arrested Clem on the second assault in the locker room). One key piece of evidence already had been destroyed by the Florida Department of Transportation—the Sept. 2, 2002, tape of the beating of our son on the bus. When I first asked for the tape, I was told they were going to review it. When I asked for a copy of it, it had disappeared. It should have been the first item of evidence the Sheriff’s Office took into possession, especially because the hospital needed to know exactly how he was hit. It was a sucker punch from behind, which is considered a death blow depending on the force. But Resource Officer Jonathan Doyle, who was on duty at the school that day and was involved in the fence incident, apparently failed to obtain the tape. There were multiple statements from children who witnessed the incident on the bus and in the locker room, but very few statements from adults. Other than Clem’s booking and sentencing two weeks later, there seemed to be no additional investigation regarding the events that took place that day and who dropped the ball. I visited the Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 27, 2006, and made a formal complaint to Major Mark Schrader that the department “failed to document or even work a battery that occurred to his son.” In the documentation that Major Schrader wrote, he stated: “Two days after the school bus incident he came to the front desk of the Sheriff’s Office and asked for the report. He was told he would have to wait a couple days before the report was ready. Because his son’s medical needs were more

39 important he did not come back to the Sheriff’s Office for 6-9 months; at which time he spoke to Capt. Bobby Lee, who said he would get back with him, but never did. “Bean said that his complaint is that the Sheriff’s Office failed to do their job, by not properly investigating the alleged batteries committed against his son that occurred in the unincorporated area of Highlands County, where the Sheriff’s Office has jurisdiction. He wants to know if a report was written, where it is, and if there was a camera on the school bus that day, and if so, where the tape is. He claims the Sheriff’s Office has lost or destroyed the reports and tape. Bean repeatedly stated that the Sheriff’s Office, the State Attorney’s Office, and the Sebring P.D. let his son down, by not properly protecting his son.” We requested arbitration from the Office of the Attorney General, which was headed at that time by Charlie Crist. “We do not conduct arbitration hearings to resolve public access disputes. However, section 16.60, Florida Statutes, establishes an open government mediation program if you are interested in that program.” The Sheriff’s Office counsel, Mike Durham, was cced on the letter. Twelve days later, on Nov. 20, 2006, he responded to Crist’s office stating: “Sheriff Susan Benton would not object to a mediation concerning a public records issue raised by Bobbie Bean. However, there are no records in the possession of the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office concerning a September 3rd, 2002 incident regarding assaults on a school bus, specifically number 153; therefore there is little to mediate.” Attorney Durham was wrong. I obtained a “magic” letter from Pat Gleason at the state Attorney General’s Office to give to the Sheriff’s Office and Police Department. After four attempts to obtain any public records relating to the incident, that letter was the key in getting the Sebring Police Department too finally hand over the Sept. 3, 2002 booking of Clem by the Sheriff’s Office. It was the first time we had ever seen the booking sheet, and it raised questions about what other evidence existed—or had been destroyed—at the Sheriff’s Office. In a Dec. 11, 2006, letter to the Florida Bar, I wrote the following about Mr. Durham, who was general counsel for the Sheriff’s Office: While at a public delegation meeting, “I spoke in front of the delegates regarding school bullying. Mr. Durham walked right behind me, I could hear him breathing on my neck. There are many witnesses to verify Mr. Durham followed right behind me. … Mr. Durham asked me to speak with him in private. “Better start shutting up your mouth and

40 watch your P’s & Q’s. … Do not push my buttons … or there will be complications from the Sheriff’s Office. I don’t appreciate these bullying tactics.”” Nine days later, on Dec. 20, 2006, the Internal Affairs Division of Sheriff Susan Benton’s office wrote a five page report addressing my complaint that ended with the following statements: “Mr. Bean’s allegation that SRO and school officials boarded the school bus at Sebring High School and then failed to investigate the incident is considered—unfounded. Mr. Bean’s allegation that the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office destroyed or lost the records that may have existed involving the Sheriff’s Office investigation is considered—Unfounded. Mr. Bean’s allegation that the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office did not properly investigate the incident on board the bus, thus not preventing the battery that occurred later in the school locker room is considered—Unfounded.” It became clear at that point that the Sheriff’s Office, school board, and other public entities collectively were covering up and blocking the investigation. To recoup our many losses, we needed to follow through with a lawsuit. Those losses included excessive medical bills that continued to pile up for years. The most recent were for therapy for Matthew’s PTSD. When we served the school district notification of a lawsuit, the process was delayed due to the death of our recently hired new attorney. The lack of response to our requests by the Sheriff’s Office caused us to forge ahead and file a notice of claim in the fall of 2007 with the generous help of advocate Cathy Cannivet. I also had a wonderful friend in the Shriners organization, Ralph Leicester, who encouraged and supported our family. He eventually recommended that we hire Attorney Bill Chambers. Meanwhile, a new problem arose. Law enforcement was trying to determine whose jurisdiction it was to investigate the incident on the bus. It should have been the Sheriff’s jurisdiction because it took place outside the city limits, as stated in their own internal investigation: “The battery that occurred while on the bus had allegedly occurred in the unincorporated section of Highlands County, so she [Police Officer Milbrecht] contacted Sergeant Baily of the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office” to obtain permission from him to investigate the battery. Later in the internal investigation, it suspiciously states “Sergeant Baily said he did not have an independent recollection of Officer Milbrecht contacting him about four years ago, but he said that it could have been “plausible.”

The high school is outside city limits. Consequently, when the bus arrived at the high school first, Jonathan Doyle, the Sheriff’s Resource Officer, made the decision with the dean to have the middle school inside city limits address the problem. The Sheriff’s Office records had no testimony on file from either officer about the decision. But Matthew should have been removed from the bus at that point and examined by the nurse. Instead, the bus was waved on to the middle school. At the middle school, Dean Finnell got on the bus but failed to follow protocol. The boys were never sent to the principal’s office or nursing station. The Police Department didn’t open an investigation into the bus incident until several days later. The second and third beatings at the school took place inside Sebring city limits because they occurred at the middle school, making it the Police Department’s jurisdiction to investigate those incidents. Clem was arrested only for the second incident in the locker room. The first incident on the bus failed to be addressed by law enforcement. Meanwhile, we never found out about the bus episode until the fourth day after the incident. By then, we had caught our breath because Matthew had stabilized and was out of the critical zone. Our son, Greg, told us about how the fight began. No school district official, resource officer, bus driver, or law enforcement official contacted us to go over the details of what had happened. We were the ones who brought it to the attention of the Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Benton sent me to the Sebring Police Department, at which point Officer Milbrecht sent me back to the Sheriff’s Office to investigate the bus incident. I was so upset that I went to the State Attorney of Highlands County, Peter Estrada, who documented the bus beating. Once Matthew was released from the hospital, we learned that three coaches were close by in the locker room. But they claimed they didn’t hear anything. The children made no effort to get help from an adult. Clem, who clearly was the alpha male, was calling the shots. We again had to bring this third battery to the attention of law enforcement as they were unaware it had happened. It was the third battery that sealed the damage, put Matthew into the critical zone, and resulted in chronic PTSD. Had adults properly intervened on the bus, at the high school, when the bus arrived at the middle school, or in the locker room, I know our family would be stable and intact today. We never would have undergone the long-term trauma their inaction caused. One of our ways of coping was to travel to Tallahassee in 2007 and immerse ourselves again in lobbying for the Jeffrey Johnson Stand Up for All Students Act.

Matthew was the only family member who stayed home with relatives and didn’t make the trek because it was too traumatic for him. But the lobbying was therapeutic for him indirectly because it helped him resolve his sense of victimization and lack of justice from “trusted” institutions. In early 2008 I received an anonymous email suggesting that I check my fence for a package. Attached to the gate was a manila folder that contained one piece of paper—a report faxed to Sheriff Benton’s office from State Attorney Jerry Hill that contained questions regarding missing evidence from the evidence room at the Sheriff’s Office and FDLE. I turned the information over to the press. Channel 8 and the Highlands Today newspaper jumped on the story. The Sheriff’s Office went under the microscope. An audit discovered missing firearms, drugs, and DNA evidence. After the final audit, about 200 cases were found to be compromised due to 78 missing pieces of evidence. It was determined that volunteers were working in the evidence room, and the Sheriff’s Office lacked sound protocol for their procedures. The FDLE implemented new procedures and then accredited the Sheriff’s Office. This raised a lot of questions in my mind about the handling of our son’s bullying case, which technically was attempted murder because it involved death blows. Meanwhile, our lawsuit progressed to arbitration. We learned a lot more about what our son endured from the depositions. We learned that Clem had two years of karate experience, two years of martial arts, boxing and wrestling experience, and possible steroid use. It was suggested to us by someone with ties to law enforcement that Clem’s dad was an undercover agent in the area, which could explain why Clem received preferential treatment from law enforcement, the courts, athletic coaches, and the school district. We also learned about the 90-yard walk to the nursing station when Clem could have taken him a shorter distance across the courtyard. A coach was within 10 yards who could have helped. We learned that the school board offered to help Clem obtain a college scholarship because he had placed second in the state in the 200 pound class. Meanwhile, we had to send our son to a private school because we were concerned about him coming in contact with Clem again. His education was paid for by our family, friends, and the McKay scholarship. No one from the school committee, town, or school district helped Matthew obtain a scholarship or pay for his education.

While Matthew was in intensive care at Tampa Hospital shortly after the beating, he received a threatening phone call from Clem and his mother that instilled even greater fear. When he returned home, they called again and left messages on the phone machine that required intervention by the Sheriff’s Office. Clem’s mother also threatened Carolyn one day when she approached her. “I know where you live,” she said menacingly. The final threat came many years later. When we were completing our lawsuit, Matthew was attending a community college. Clem’s mother stalked him at the college, and when he was alone in the lobby, startled him and said “You should think about dropping this lawsuit.” During court proceedings for Clem, his parents were required to pay restitution for medical expenses. But in the end, we accepted a settlement that was far below what we should have received—it didn’t even cover the medical expenses. Never mind the punitive damages or other costs such as loss of business and pain and suffering. But our family was so exhausted by the six-year-long experience, we settled prematurely just to get it behind us. I turned the entire monetary award over to Matthew so that he could complete college, and he eventually moved away from Sebring to start a new life. We were left with a dream house that was never completed, a family in shambles, chronic PTSD from the experience, and a marriage that was never the same again.

Chapter 5

We returned to Tallahassee in March of 2008 as the Florida Senate resumed a new session. We had to start all over again gathering proxies and gaining support for the bill in committee after committee after committee. We were tired. This was the fourth round in our attempts to pass the bill on both floors. It had reached the point where high heat was needed if the bill was going to become law. I created a second four-page brochure that outlined the lack of accountability on the part of the teachers union and law enforcement. Both were lobbying against the bill behind closed doors. They seemed uncomfortable every time we got on the floor and reminded them that they had dropped the ball. Their lack of support showed that they were not putting the children first. During that time, Gary Bradford, a political lobbyist for the Florida Police Benevolent Association, apologized to our entire family in Tallahassee for what we had endured over those six years with so little support. He spoke on behalf of the bill behind closed doors and in the hallways. He was an exemplary police officer and a credit to the badge. We ran out of energy and money and had to lobby for the bill from home while Debbie Johnston wrangled with the legislators at the statehouse. The bill finally passed and was signed into law on May 2, 2008. Debbie called me at midnight and said between her tears: “No child will ever have to walk like Matthew walked, and no child will ever die like Jeffrey did.” It was rewarding to know that we had made a difference for children throughout the public schools in Florida and had set an example for other states. Prior to its passing though, Debbie tole me how she tracked down Clem and left a message on his Facebook wall that he was “gay”. This is the exact thing that she lobbied against. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed in this move. Some of the practical requirements in the new bill included: a ban on harassment and intimidation at all public and private Florida schools; anti-bullying committees at each school; forms to fill out for parents to report an incident; prompt and proper investigating, reporting, and archiving of incidents (including tapings of bus incidents) at the state level; referral of perpetrators to the proper authorities and counseling; certified letters sent by the school district to the victim’s family

47 notifying them of procedures done to protect their children. (The entire Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act can be read in Appendix A of this book.) While the Florida bill wasn’t as hard hitting as we had hoped, it did start a national debate where several states followed suit with their own bills. What we started with, and what was finally signed into law, were two very different bills. The final version had several teeth knocked out. However, the bill still was considered tough because it restricted Safe Schools funding to school districts if they didn’t adopt and comply with the policies outlined in the law. It was the toughest anti-bullying law in the nation at that time, according to Attorney David Tirella, who worked tirelessly for its passage. “Bullying is bullying. It’s going to go on forever,” Tirella said when asked about the effectiveness of HR699. “But it was historic. It was a positive first step in a long process to try to eradicate or at least minimize bullying. Eradicating it could be a pipe dream, but minimizing it is a reality,” he adds. “We anticipated that there would be amendments or tweaking of the law.” The impact of the bill on the number of bullying incidents is still in question. In the 2007-2008 school year, there were 5,730 bullying incidents reported to the FLDOE. The 2008-2009 school year showed a slight decline (65 fewer) to 5,665. Preliminary data for 2009-2010 showed a significant increase over the previous year (469 more). “I think that’s a positive. The first year they had a reporting grace period. The drastic increase in the number of reporting does not tell me there were more bullying incidents , it confirms that lack of documentation was the problem,” Tirella says. “Now we have a baseline to know in a typical year when reporting is required, how many bullying incidents took place and were documented. We can then compare it with the other years to determine whether bullying is decreasing based on the new law.” The increase in 2009-2010 indicates two possibilities: Either school districts reported incidents more frequently to be in compliance with the law, or the actual numbers of bullying incidents increased. (The numbers actually may be higher because some school districts may underreport incidents to have the appearance of being proactive on anti-bullying efforts. However, they risk having their Safe Schools funds cut if they do not report every incident.) Some $67,260,840 was appropriated for Safe Schools expenditures during the 2009-2010 school year.

Many people who lobbied for the bill and compromised with law enforcement and the teacher’s union on policies and procedures did so with the understanding that the bill could one day come back to the floor for revision and strengthening. Four years have passed, and an amendment just passed that further strengthens the bill. The goal now should be to remove every loophole so that the funding is used appropriately for antibullying efforts. The amendment clarified how Safe Schools funding should be used and created greater oversight to track appropriations to make sure they’re suitable. But criminal charges still need to be incorporated into the law if funding is intentionally misused or misappropriated. We need better oversight and monitoring to make sure anti-bullying workshops are actually taking place. There should be stronger repercussions for perpetrators, and stronger preventative measures, especially in light of some very serious recent bullying incidents in Florida that indicate that the present law is falling short. One recent example is the case of Michael Brewer of Ft. Lauderdale, who was lit on fire by a group of boys in 2009. The school district had been contacted by the parents about the bullying, but apparently its response was too slow. When Debbie went to Washington, D.C. after the bill passed to raise awareness on the need for anti-bullying legislations, she told me that many legislators she spoke with couldn’t understand the need for these laws. But the idea caught on, and it turned out that the problem in Florida was” just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “Now everybody’s got an anti-bullying bill.” Some 48 states have anti-bullying laws on the books. South Dakota and Montana are the only states without anti-bullying legislation at this time. You can view information about the ratings for each state’s legislation at www.bullypolice.org. Massachusetts passed one of the strongest bills in 2010 after high school student Phoebe Prince, 15, and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, 11, committed suicide in 2009 apparently from aggressive bullying. The Massachusetts law requires school district personnel to undergo training to identify and appropriately deal with bullying. It also requires all school officials—including bus drivers and cafeteria workers—to report bullying to a principal. However critics say it lacks teeth because before passage, it removed all references to fines or loss of jobs if personnel failed to report an incident.

New Jersey recently passed what many consider the toughest anti-bullying law in the nation. Trouble is, the law was recently deemed unconstitutional by the state Council on Local Mandates because it’s an unfunded mandate. The state constitution prohibits passage of laws that raise costs for local government unless funding is provided. Therefore, it must be changed. New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights was drafted after the death of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University who was bullied into suicide by a roommate. It has the stiffest sentencing possible for bullying on record. Not only does it require extensive training of school district personnel and students, but it requires safety teams comprised of teachers, parents, and other school employees. The law states that every reported bullying incident must be investigated within one day. When I ran for the office of the United States Senate from the state of Florida in 2010, I investigated Highlands County’s Safe Schools funds to see how they were being allocated. These are the federal funds that school districts receive from the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE). Compliance with the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act is necessary to receive the funding. This federal funding is not new. It has been appropriated by the Legislature as a part of the Florida Education Finance Program since 1994. According to House Bill 5001, Safe Schools funds should be used for “school programs for middle school students; other improvements to enhance the learning environment, including implementation of conflict resolution strategies; alternative school programs for adjudicated youth; suicide prevention programs; and other improvements to make the school a safe place to learn.” Many Florida schools use Safe Schools funds for anti-bullying educational programs starting as early as kindergarten. But I found that the vast majority of the funding in Highlands County was going to the Sheriff and Police Departments and a “boot camp” called the Academy at Youth Care Lane. Most of Highlands County’s federal dollars were being funneled to law enforcement for job creation. I believe a good portion of that money instead should be used for early intervention programs that address bullying and more anti-bullying activities and workshops. There is documented evidence that early intervention works. But my investigation found over a five-year period that Safe Schools fund payments from the Highlands County School Board to law enforcement agencies more than

50 quadrupled—from $173,404 in 2003 to $745,490 in 2008. The vast majority of the funding went toward school resource and “boot camp” officers. Without more preventative programs, workshops, and teaching on bullying issues in the classroom, Highlands County is creating a time bomb. The questionable use of Highlands County’s Safe Schools funds shows that the federal Safe Schools funding that is funneled through the FLDOE should be monitored more closely. In 2004, the School Board created the Academy at Youth Care Lane as an “alternative to expulsion for Highlands County students in grades six through 12.” It emphasizes “marching drills, calisthenics, a rigid dress code, manual labor assignments, physical training with obstacle courses,” according to a document from the Academy. The Academy is the “only one of its kind in Florida,” assistant superintendent Rodney Hollinger proudly told the Bean campaign. The Highlands County School Board created the Academy in 2004 at a time when boot camps were being questioned as a safe and effective means of discipline. They have been found to be dangerous, and some studies question their effectiveness. They can make behavior problems worse, critics say. In 2006, then-Governor Bush signed a bill dissolving boot camps in Florida and replacing them with the Sheriff’s Training and Respect (STAR) program. The action occurred after a boot camp in Polk County was the focus of intense media scrutiny when a 12-year-old boy was exercised to death in 2005 by drill instructors. “Every day we had to do drills and drink water until we threw up,” one 19- year-old Sebring resident recalled who was placed at the Academy at Youth Care Lane after punching a child at school. He described the program as “too rigorous.” A parent whose child was placed at the Academy described it as a “strenuous and scary program for a teenager,” according to a letter written to Superintendent Wally Cox that was obtained by the Bean campaign. A survey done by my staff found no anti-bullying pamphlets or brochures available from the school district, local law enforcement, children’s agencies, the Chamber of Commerce, or at kiosks in the mall in Sebring. When they requested anti-bullying information or program manuals from the high school resource officer, the only information provided was the Federal D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program notebook, which emphasizes resisting substance abuse and smoking and really does not focus on bullying. It is customarily used by school districts nationwide.

Our survey found that the non-profit Highlands County Boys and Girls Clubs of Sebring and Avon Park were actively working on bullying prevention. Among their activities is an annual joint outing to a major big league sports event to diffuse tension between youth gangs in the two communities. When the Bean campaign inquired about Safe Schools allocations to Highlands County in 2007-08, the following response was received from Pat Landress, head of Federal Programs at the Highlands County School Board: “For the past 2 years our district has used Safe and Drug Free funds to pay for an Addictions Specialist who works with our students (and their families) who are assigned to our alternative school,” she wrote. “In 07-08 we used some funds for bullying, and although our grant did not originally show it, we did use some 08-09 funds to send guidance counselors to bullying conferences.” When asked to provide invoices and cancelled checks for the Safe Schools projects, the Bean campaign received the following response: “Sorry, the person who was in charge of this retired—I don’t know where her records are.” We then requested cancelled checks from the County Commissioners and Sheriff’s Office showing allocations for school and Academy resource officers and discovered a double payment for 2008. On 3-21-08, a $370,294 payment was made, and on 10-10-08 a $383,432 occurred. It was more than double the amount of monies received in past years. Although we found no record of a similar payment for 2009, it was unclear why the Safe Schools money had been allocated this way. Repeat requests for an explanation from the County Commissioner’s Office and Sheriff’s Office were met with insufficient details. One voucher described the use of the Safe Schools money for expenditures that included “Background checks, conc weapons permits, community maint, fingerprints, meals, school res. officers.” (The full investigation can be found in Appendix B of this book.) The most interesting Safe Schools expenditures record came from a Bean campaign Freedom of Information request of the Highlands County School District after we decided to explore how the federal funds were being appropriated. A page faxed to my campaign from the school district on Jan. 21, 2010, entitled 9377 SAFE SCHOOLS states: “Highlands’ County’s allocation from this categorical for 2009/2010 is $316,278. … Some of the qualifying expenditures are: Highlands County Sheriff —SRO Program $235,780 City of Avon Park—SRO $70,662

Sebring Police—SRO $37,485 Hand Sanitizer for Flu Epidemics $30,527 Security Payrolls $55,808 Total: $430,262”

Hand Sanitizer for the Flu Epidemics?! I guess it struck the assistant superintendent as an odd entry under Safe Schools expenditures, too, because he circled it. Before sending us the fax, he scribbled on the bottom of the page: “Not processed through Safe Schools funds. Insufficient funds available. R. Hollinger” While he provided an explanation for the oddity, one wonders why “hand sanitizer for the flu epidemic” appeared under the category of Safe Schools expenditures in the first place. The Bean campaign did not request cancelled checks for hand sanitizer expenditures to double check the records. However, we did verify with the FLDOE that hand sanitizer is not an appropriate expenditure for Safe Schools funding. And we did post our findings on my campaign website in 2010. At some point it must have struck Senator Ellyn Bogdanoff of Ft. Lauderdale as odd, too. She did her own investigation into the used of Safe Schools funding and her staff discovered the same thing we found in Highlands County—and several other questionable expenditures by other school districts under the category of Safe Schools funds in the 2009-2010 year. Six districts used Safe Schools funds for the Florida Association of School Resource Officers conference expenses; five allocated funds for Internet firewalls; three for implementing a philosophical educational approach called “Single School Culture;” eight spent funds on “school facility/safety improvements.” Bogdanoff’s office stated it was their understanding that this category included “the purchase of hand sanitizer for the schools.” From 2005 to 2010, about 87% of the funds were used in the category of Safety/Security Program Activities—the majority in this category currently are designated for School Resource Officers, according to her office. She proposed a substitute amendment that deleted the wording “anything to enhance the safety of the school district” and strengthened the hammer provision of the bill to withhold funding from districts that fail to comply with the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act. The 2012 session bill passed on March 9, 2012, now includes the wording “bullying prevention and intervention” and “school resource officers” as recommended activities into the 2012-2013 Safe Schools

53 proviso language. It also requires FLDOE to create clear language on how districts can lose their Safe Schools Appropriation Funds due to noncompliance with the Jeffrey Johnston Act (see Appendix B). As mindboggling as this sounds, the amendment was necessary because the wording “bullying prevention” or “intervention” was not used by any district in the 2009-2010 Safe Schools report by the FLDOE Office of Safe Schools, according to Bogdanoff’s office. “No districts are currently reporting to the state that they are using any of the Safe School funds for specific bullying prevention or intervention activities,” her office found. There was very little oversight by the FLDOE Office of Safe Schools: No district has ever had their funds withheld. Such provisions should keep school districts from tucking items such as “hand sanitizer” into Safe Schools appropriations because they fit into the category of “anything to enhance the safety of the school district”—strange, but true. That’s just how carefully our legislation needs to be crafted to avoid loopholes and keep an eye on our federal dollars. My hope is that the Bean campaign contributed to an awareness of the need for an amendment. Our federal Safe Schools funds need transparency, oversight, and clear designation for the specific purpose of deterring bullying and cyberbullying. Such changes can help avert disasters such as the one that beset these children below, who are no longer with us because they were bullied into suicide.

Chapter 6

When I campaigned for the United States Senate seat, I appeared on numerous radio shows with parents. I tried to understand their concerns raising children during a time of great uncertainty. Many parents have stood in unemployment lines, fretted over foreclosure, and wondered whether they could put food on the table every night. The last thing they need to worry about is what could happen to their child at school. Parents have the right to know when their children are abused or violated in a school district. They have the right to advocate for their children when they are accosted, bullied, or harmed. We made sure the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act incorporated this “right to know” into the law. It includes prompt and proper investigating, reporting, and archiving of incidents at the state level (including tapings of bus incidents) so that parents and attorneys have access to concrete evidence. It also requires that certified letters be sent by the school district to the victim’s family notifying them of procedures done to protect their children. Such requirements should be included in anti-bullying laws across the nation. I lobbied long and hard to make sure those requirements were part of the Florida’s anti-bullying laws. When I exercised our parental right to know what exactly happened in Matthew’s case, our family was denied evidence by the Sheriff’s Office and Highlands County School District about the extent of the assault. It took four requests to finally get Clem’s booking sheet, and the video from the incident on the bus never was located. My family’s disturbing experience in a small, semi-rural town in middle America is emblematic of what is happening in our country on a much broader scale as parental rights to advocate for their children are eroding. They are being trampled by the very system these parents pay taxes into. The present system is failing to protect their right to be free from harassment, adult bullying, and retaliation when they advocate for their children. Such opposition is more common than you would think when parents begin advocating for their children because they believe they are entitled to certain rights under the law. For example, I know of a mother whose child was being bullied

55 emotionally and physically on a nearly daily basis because he was effeminate. Joyce went to the administrative offices of the school district and threatened to contact the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) if the bullying was not addressed. The next day the police showed up at Joyce’s door and accused her of harassing and threatening school district officials, she alleges. The child was moved to another school within the district, but within the year Joyce, who was a nurse, was accused of having Munschausen by Proxy Syndrome, an extremely rare mental health issue. Joyce’s two sons were removed from her care by social services shortly thereafter. I shared time with another parent on the Justice for Children blog talk radio show in which the topic of retaliation in relation to school districts was being discussed. Gretchen was framed and her child removed from her care by social services because she advocated for Troy’s free and appropriate education (FAPE) and special education services. She took her case through the state education appeals process and won without a lawyer by her side. The case against the school district was that clear cut. Shortly thereafter, Gretchen was falsely accused of being promiscuous with Troy. A court order required that Gretchen be assessed for Munschausen by Proxy Syndrome. She was 39, had no criminal record, and was neither an alcohol nor drug abuser. Her school district-appointed tutor, Doris, stated several years later that she was asked by district administrators to document lies about Gretchen. It was discovered many years later that the same tutor befriended Gretchen’s mother and told her lies about Gretchen. The mother has confirmed that she was contacted, lied to, and asked to support the removal of Troy from Gretchen’s care. Troy was ordered into an evaluation facility for six months, where he attended no school. This was followed by a residential school for six months. The Department of Children and Families (DCF) then placed him with his father, where he was physically abused and eventually ended up in foster care. The mother was Jewish, but because Troy was in state custody, he was removed from religious studies at the Hebrew School against his will and kept from undergoing a bar mitzvah. According to Dr. Eric Mart, author of “”Munchausen by Proxy reconsidered,” this syndrome occurs in about one out of every 50,000 people, Joyce and Gretchen lived on the same street in the same school district of about 40,000 right down the street from the school district administration building. Both of these women lived on Main Street within ½ mile of each other just down the street from the school district’s administration offices. Both were accused

56 of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome and had their children removed from their care. Both of their sons returned home to them when they became old enough to choose where they wanted to live. I have seen the legal system, often influenced by school districts; throw support toward the less-proactive parent, resulting in questionable guardianship arrangements. I have witnessed extremely disturbing and criminal retaliation against professionals who attempt to raise questions about the treatment of these parents or apparent injustices within the system. Another mother who spoke on the radio show from Tennessee was advocating for her special needs daughter when she discovered questionable expenditures in the school district special education budget. She complained about her findings at a school committee meeting. A month later, she was thrown into a mental health facility for a month because the doctors claimed she was paranoid and injected with an unknown substance that resulted in extreme lack of mental clarity and excessive lactation. When she was released, she said she was threatened by a police officer who lived on her street and harassed by strangers in public places. She was found hung in her closet ten months after she addressed the school committee, leaving a husband and three children behind. The practice of forced psychiatric evaluations, sometimes recommended by police, is not only something adults face as a form of retaliation or to discredit them when advocating for their children. In Florida, a child can be Baker Acted to an emergency psychiatric ward without the parent’s permission at the whim of school district personnel if they want them assessed. The long-term damage this can do to a child—and family—should be more carefully considered before such procedures are executed. These become permanent records that can follow a child around for a lifetime. If a child is deemed a behavior problem, chemical restraints can be ordered by school district personnel to render children into drugged-up, compliant students. Parental advocacy rights to say “no” to schools that prescribe drugs to keep children in their seats is atrophying at a rapid rate. If a parent refused to place that child on psychotropic drugs, they can be deemed an unfit parent. Their child can be removed from their care and placed in foster care. Foster care parents cannot refuse psychotropic drugs prescriptions for children in their care if deemed necessary by a state agency. After all, the child has been placed in their care by a taxpayer-funded agency or court order.

In a riveting 2011 report by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), investigators found that “foster and nonfoster children under 1 year old were prescribed psychotropic drugs, which GAO’s experts said have no established use for mental health conditions in infants; providing them these drugs could result in serious adverse effects.” The five-state investigation, “HHS Guidance Could Help States Improve Oversight Psychotropic Prescriptions,” further stated: “Thousands of foster and nonfoster children were prescribed doses higher than the maximum levels of cited in guidelines developed by Texas based on FDA-approved labels…. “This increases the risk of adverse side effects and does not typically increase the efficacy of the drugs to any significant extent.” Drugs designed for adults were frequently used for children. There was no evidence to support “the concomitant use of five or more psychotropic drugs in adults or children” that sometimes resulted in psychosis and suicide at very young ages, the report further stated. The present system basically is allowing for drug testing on young children at the taxpayer’s expense. With the growing problem of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, parents need to be increasingly careful that their children do not become pawns for illicit purposes. Some $4.1 billion was recovered in 2011 by federal officials from deceptive Medicare claims. One bust involved more than 100 doctors, nurses, and physical therapists in nine states. Medicare and Medicaid fraud has become so lucrative that hardened criminals are passing up drug dealing for medical fraud in care provider networks. School districts and their providers are just as prone to fraudulent practices as the medical industry. This can make advocating for your child a dangerous affair if you are a savvy parent who stumbles over fraudulent practices with your child’s service provider. It has become so easy to document misinformation against parents, and remove their children from their care, that parents of special needs children are taking costly attorneys and advocates to school meetings. What parent would ever bring a tape recorder along to a pediatrician visit or attach a tape recorder to a child when they attend Catechism class or Sunday School? It’s hard to believe, but parents are planting tape recorders in backpacks to protect their children—and themselves. They are recording the truth because the school district’s records are falsified, law

58 enforcement isn’t recording incidents properly, and/or terrible things are happening at the school to their children. It is often up to the parent to prove abuse by public school personnel. Yet parents are barred from unannounced visits to their children’s classrooms to see if inclusion of their special needs child is really taking place, as the law requires in several states. They can be arrested for doing so. Removing a child from school long-term can result in accusations of truancy and jail time for a parent. Even worse, a child who is skipping school because they are being bullied or abused can be thrown into truancy court without the judge looking at the underlying reasons. A recent news account reported that a 9-year-old boy was tasered by a police officer from a small Ohio police department. The child was refusing to go to school and became hostile, resulting in the taser incident. The police department was then shut down. I couldn’t help but wonder why this young child didn’t want to go to school. Imagine if he was being bullied, and the adults weren’t responding to his needs appropriately. Shortly after Matthew’s beating, I withdrew our boys from the school district while I raised questions about how our son could have been accosted three times in 2 ½ hours without appropriate adult intervention to the point that he had to be flightlifted to an emergency room with life support. The school district and school committee continued to railroad us and failed to convince us that our children would be free from another bullying incident. Clem had returned to school, and I had been told by a doctor that another blow to Matthew’s head could be fatal. Instead of providing the kind of assurances we were looking for, the assistant superintendent sent us a letter stating that we had 14 days to return the boys to school or they would be guilty of truancy. Under state laws, I could then be arrested and placed in jail. In our opinion, our only choice was to withdraw the boys from school, homeschooled them, and eventually placed them in a private school when we could afford it. If you don’t believe that abuse can take place in our public schools, consider these recent events at Miramonte Elementary School near Los Angeles. In 2011, a veteran third grade teacher with 30 years of experience was caught blindfolding children, placing cockroaches on their faces, and feeding them semen from a spoon, according to multiple news accounts. The teacher was engaged in these practices for over five years before they were discovered—not by a parent, but by the photo developer who brought bizarre pictures to the attention of law enforcement.

While this kind of extreme abuse is rare, every week there are news reports about teachers with poor judgment who have conducted themselves in questionable ways with children—sometime horrifically. Inappropriate touching or hitting, illegal drugs shared with students, sex with students, and child pornography found on computers are just some of the headlines we might see in a month’s time. These same teachers can recommend assessments for psychotropic or ADD/ADHD medications, Baker Acting a child, or perform restraint and seclusion on children with behavior problems. In 2009, the GAO investigated the practice of restraint and seclusion. “Although we could not determine whether allegations of death and abuse were widespread, we did discover hundreds of such allegations at public and private schools across the nation between the years 1990 and 2009,” the report states. In the category of “Death from Face Down Restraints or Restraints that Block the Airway” alone, the GAO identified hundreds of allegations. Almost all involved children with disabilities. “At least 20 involved restraints that resulted in death,” the report states. Shockingly, the agency couldn’t find “a single Web site, federal agency, or other entity that collects comprehensive information” on the number of deaths that have occurred in public and private schools because of these practices, according to “Seclusions And Restraints: Selected Cases of Death and Abuse at Public and Private Schools and Treatment Centers,” which was released on May 19, 2009. My concerns about school safety and appropriate practices are by no means meant to discredit the thousands of devoted school teachers, aides, counselors, administrators, resource officers, and other law enforcement officials all over the country who face challenging students on a daily basis. They involve parents in problem solving for their children, and they treat them respectfully. They are to be commended. They are impacting children’s lives in positive ways on a daily basis. I am truly concerned about the dangers some teachers and administrators face on a daily basis from out-of-control students. We need to continue to look for safe alternatives for both students and teachers. Perhaps our Safe Schools funds could be used for alternatives and training programs to prevent tragedies such as deaths from face-down restraints. “Many school staff who are using restraint techniques are not trained properly on the techniques and the children’s disabilities,” according to advocate Phyllis

Musumeci of Viera, Florida, who is the founder of Families Against Restraint and Seclusion. When teachers and aides don’t understand the child’s disability, they overreact and can cause harm to the child because “they think the child is just being belligerent or disobedient,” she says. These kids are constantly being punished for things that are out of their control. All behaviors are a form of communication. If you have a child with little or no verbal skills, behaviors can be for some children the only way they can communicate.” Proper training is the key, she adds. Applied Behavior Analysis, Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports, Sensory Integration, Cognitive Behavior Support Therapy, and Comfort/Sensory Rooms are all important nonviolent approaches for special needs children that can teach the child positive behaviors and coping skills with less stress applied. Instead of seclusion spaces, she recommends comfort/sensory rooms as a valuable means for soothing children. But what’s most important is for school districts to respect a parent’s right to know when they are advocating for their child, and include parents in the decision making and problem solving for their children.

Chapter 7

If someone told me when I was 20 years old—winning state and international gold medals in weightlifting—that I would one day help get a bill passed through the Florida legislature, I would have laughed. Even more amusing is that I went on to run for the United States Senate seat for the state of Florida in 2010. I’m just your basic, middle-to-lower class American. I’m a blue-jean wearing, occasionally swearing, hard-working man with a working man’s dreams, ethics, and concerns about America. I drive a Chevy pickup truck, and my clothes and groceries come from the least-expensive stores in town. But after my son and entire family were bullied by a group in town, I became concerned not only about our treatment, but the erosion of the American Dream I worked so hard to build. My family’s dream got trampled by the very system I’d paid taxes into for years. I’ve watched the dream of millions of too many hard- working Americans get destroyed over the years as well by a government that’s on a collision course. That’s when I decided to put the rake and hoe aside as a melon farmer and printer and run for the Senate as an Independent. Like all of the small candidates who ran in that race, I didn’t garner much of the vote. I had neither the millions of dollars nor the staff to be able to get my message out to the public. But I’m a strong advocate for government built on individual rights as outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Like many Americans, I watched the American Dream crumble over the years as the US fell into disrepair from lax regulation, lack of accountability, and endemic corruption. Food stamps and pink slips became the norm. I believe that the average, working American isn’t fairly represented in Washington, D. C. About half of our congressional representatives are millionaires. We need more representatives who understand the needs of the average working American. The need for accountability, oversight, and government reform has never been greater—especially for working and middle class Americans. We need government that runs efficiently and is free of wasteful spending. When I lobbied in Tallahassee,

I observed the passage of frivolous bills and pork barrel spending. Florida and America can no longer afford waste-and-spend politics. The gap between the rich and poor in America has never been greater, according to a 2010 Brookings Institute report. The Sun Belt states were some of the hardest hit. The achievement gap between rich and poor children is also widening. This is a disgrace in a county that was once considered a land of opportunity where anyone could build their dream under a democratic system. I am not an advocate for tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. When I campaigned, I advocated for a Great Works project to jumpstart the economy. I raised the question of rebuilding our asphalt highways into solar roadways that would provide electricity directly from the streets to homes and businesses. It could power a fleet of American-built electric cars. Penn State is studying the technology and designing the panels that would make these progressive roadways possible. Imagine the number of jobs rebuilding our roadways would provide—from the automotive industry to solar panel manufacturing to engineers, surveyors, and construction workers. There would be a chicken in the pot for every household, home ownership could become the norm for the middle-class American again, and we could collectively rebuild the American Dream. I campaigned a lot on the issue of education and safe schools. The D.A.R.E. program in our public schools is not enough to combat the growing problem of youth violence. We need to provide more after-school opportunities and positive role models throughout the community, in our schools, and out on the streets. Being a law enforcement officer is a privilege. Our officers need a better understanding of the importance of their work in protecting the constitutional and civil rights of all Americans. That requires greater oversight and accountability within our judicial system. Our judges should be models and standard-bearers for society. Without a sound judicial system, the ship is adrift and law enforcement has no rudder. They should not be advocates for the schools-to-prison pipeline, nor providers of a revenue stream to Child Protection Services (CPS) and the juvenile justice system, as was recently discovered with several judges in Pennsylvania who were also personally profiting from the schools-to-prison pipeline. While CPS has its purpose, it should not be for-profit agencies that create state revenues from the backs of our

63 children. You’d be amazed at how much money can be made from the foster care system . Somewhere in my elementary school years, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, which is a neurologically based learning disability that can result in poor reading and writing skills. The Florida school system failed to appropriately address my challenges. I have a keen understanding about what it means to be different or special needs. I know how harmful stereotyping people can be. Being illiterate was the most embarrassing part of my early years. I was bullied and teased because of my disability. At one time I was madly in love with one girl, but she found out I was illiterate and then laughed at me and spread it around. Another girl embarrassed me in front of the class in high school when she found out I couldn’t spell the word “grey.” Many years later I met an old friend who recalled that incident and apologized for that girl. She said that girl had told her she’d carried the guilt for what she did to me for 20 years. Experiences like that stick in your mind—the shame of being illiterate is hard to forget. When I graduated from high school, I could barely read and write. It was only with the help of a tutor, and a lot of persistence and determination, that I learned enough to barely get by. I still require help with my communications. But from this accomplishment came the determination to overcome and succeed at almost anything. From this experience also came a greater understanding of the challenges many Americans must face and overcome in their daily lives, and that’s one reason I decided to write this book. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s important to realize that during the storm. I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale near the Seminole Indian Reservation. Both my mother and father were hard-working Americans. They worked all the time to put food on the table for my brother and sister and me. They ran a printing business, and the importance of the written word and the right to publish was a part of my daily life. I know a lot about the importance of early printing presses, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Eventually I joined the family business and became a printer.

I was able to launch my own printing business with the help of Carolyn. Before I married her, I told her I was semi-literate. She replied, “Bobbie, I’m not marrying you for your reading and writing skills.” But our treatment in Sebring, and the poverty it created, took a terrible toll on our marriage. Sadly, we are now involved in divorce proceedings. Add that to the list of our broken dreams. After we married, we lived in Ft. Lauderdale for many years squirreling away our money. We began to look around for property in Central Florida in 1995 to build our dream house and found 30 of the prettiest acres just west of Sebring in Highlands County. We bought the land with the idea of dividing up the property for our children and giving each one of them a few acres. It had a small creek and was surrounded by fields used for farming and livestock. The property deed included a second entrance and 25-foot-wide ingress/egress easement or right-of-way that passed through the neighbor’s land. We were told it could be used during the rainy season when the front entrance and driveway flooded from the creek. We thought we had finally found our dream location that we had worked so hard for for over the years. For about four years we commuted from Ft. Lauderdale to a trailer on the property to build our four-bedroom home with our own hands. We chose a lovely spot next to a little duck pond and even mined the stone for the floors from a local quarry. Eventually, there was enough of a house built that we left our home in Ft. Lauderdale in 1998. I opened a printing business that serviced the community and began planting melons to help subsidize our family expenses. It was a wonderful time in our lives. Our land is quiet, peaceful, and remote. There’s an old saying that good fences make good neighbors. But in our case, our fences (there were no gates at the time) and the 30 acres of land we bought weren’t enough to keep the neighbor’s from making our lives a living hell. We had a slight taste of this when we first moved in, and odd rumors circulated throughout the rural neighborhood that Carolyn was Cuban because she has dark eyes and hair. She’s actually Italian. When our marriage broke up, I sold my printers and retrained as a personal athletic trainer with a specialty in weightlifting. The centuries-old printing industry has changed with the recent entry of the age of the computer. The old-fashioned printing press is nearly dead.

I started weightlifting as a kid at age nine in the 1970s. Eventually I won the state record for bench pressing at age 17 for the 165-pound weight class. I went on to win state, national, and international AAU Drug-free Powerlifting Championships at Disney’s Wide World of Sports arena. I was ranked among the Top 40, drug-free lifters in the world. I was a weightlifter for 29 years until 2002. I started out in Sebring as a simple melon farmer and printer building my American Dream. That dream was about freedom—the right to own land, build a home and family on it, and live there peacefully. Today, I am starting my life over without my wife and children, and my home is in shambles. My dream is shattered, my identity as a loyal American patriot tainted by grief. Our experience with the inept and inappropriate handling by county and state officials holds clues as to what’s gone wrong in America. They are clues in our story that our public policymakers, Department of Justice, and the Department of Education need to study if we want to become a great country again. "If we're going to have ObamaCare, then we should insist that it include compassion boot camps like the one Dr. Stosney provides. I can think of a number of people in my situation who could benefit from a 3-day weekend on how to become more compassionate! “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth,” wrote Aristotle. Anyone who cares about the fate of democracy should ponder these words. Then we must collectively do what is necessary to revamp our public education system to protect this great country.

Conclusion

“I would rather have a cross burned on my front lawn than have done to me what the Sheriff’s Office did to Bobbie Bean in his yard,” someone vehemently told me when I was gathering information for this book. I took on the project after Mr. Bean told me he wanted to document his story but had dyslexia and needed help with the book. As a professional, trained journalist, I started off the project with an analytical, methodical approach. I interviewed townspeople, gathered information through Freedom of Information requests, and spent time with the Bean family at their home in Florida. As I put the pieces together, more than just a story emerged. This was a story fraught with ethics questions about privacy rights, victim’s rights, and human, civil, and constitutional rights in America. What were the real crimes that took place in the Bean family’s case? Were collusions and entrapment among them? Which was the greater of these two crimes—Bobbie cutting the fence to let his wife and mother through with the groceries, or the Sheriff Department’s behavior when they arrested Mr. Bean? Clearly, the conduct of the deputies, although legal, was an abuse of power. I first began investigating retaliation by public entities back in 2006. Since that time, I’ve heard hundreds of accounts from across the country, most in relation to school districts and special education service providers. Some of the threats, apparent set ups, and bullying of adults and families were facilitated by law enforcement, school committee members, and misdirected groups of citizens. Civil, constitutional, and human rights violations are still very much a part of the fabric of America. But rather than being cloaked in the white Ku Klux Klan robes of yesteryear, some of these perpetrators hide behind badges, administrative authority, and occasionally medical degrees and white lab coats. Passage of the Patriot’s Act was a two-edged sword: While it made it easier for officials to protect the public from a terrorist attack, it eroded our rights. Loopholes created by the Patriot’s Act can now be used to cover the crimes of willful or corrupt officials who “turn the lie” on innocent parents, honest public

67 workers, journalists, or anyone questioning their conduct. Originally intended to rein in a potential terrorist attack, it can be used inappropriately to handcuff and attack the rights of honest Americans who are questioning the system. The Bean Family story shows just how easy it is to use loopholes in the present system to turn the questioning entity into a “troublemaker,” “criminal,” or “mental health” case. In ignorant, careless, or malicious hands, such violations can easily get out of hand. They can turn into orchestrated hazing, retaliation, or even murder. If a school district, for example, is trying to hide fraud, ethics violations, or abuse, the present system allows for unbridled orchestration by government entities to cover up the crime. The entities involved may not even know what they are really participating in. They are just “doing their job” keeping the “troublemaker” at bay. Where could the Bean family turn for justice and accountability? They travelled every avenue mainly looking for answers to two questions: How could a child be assaulted so severely on school district property three times in the span of two-and-a-half hours without appropriate adult intervention? Where was the necessary discussion and problem solving with the appropriate agencies to make sure it never happened again? The Beans asked these questions of the school district, school committee, Police Department, Sheriff’s Office, Attorney General’s offices, newspapers, judges, and politicians. Despite his limited writing skills, Mr. Bean wrote countless letters. He knocked on doors. He walked through office doors unannounced. His son’s life had been on the line. From his perspective, his entire family suffered the consequences of neglect, inaction, deception, and hostility. In exchange for questions that any one of us would consider logical in those circumstances, his account indicates that his family members were unfairly arrested, harassed, set up, reprimanded, impoverished, ostracized, and threatened. Even their pets mysteriously died: Their dogs were found with bullets in their heads and their cats hung on the fence. In the Police Department report written by Police Lieutenant Milbrecht, Clem states that he did not realize how damaging two blows to the head could be. Fair, and probably true. He was a 15 years old and probably didn’t completely understand the repercussions of his actions. What excuse did the adults have who repeatedly pounded on the Bean family’s security, stability, and self esteem? Didn’t they realize at the time that they were responding to a crisis inappropriately—and maliciously?

Didn’t they recognize that they were creating a powder keg of stress that could result in suicides, disruption of the nuclear family, and long-term psychological damage such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? It’s as if some community members felt justified punishing the family. That somehow Bobbie had overstepped the line from the wrong side of the tracks. It was a disturbing, cyclic dynamic in which various townspeople apparently tried to provoke the Beans in direct and indirect ways. Set ups, intimidation, harassment, and intentional delays seemed to be the game while the Beans were down trying to nurse their son back to physical and psychological health. At least Clem stopped pummeling Bobbie once he was down on the ground. I decided to help Mr. Bean write this book to help give him a voice and articulate the truth from his vantage point. My hope is that it will bring a sense of resolution and justice to his life so that he can find closure and move on. I acquired relevant documents from the school department and Sheriff’s office. I spent a week in Sebring interviewing the Bean family, school district administrators, newspaper staff, town officials, and townspeople. I spoke with state and federal officials and researched laws relating to retaliation. I listened to their accounts and gathered evidence, documents, affidavits, court testimony, letters, and testimony. There is documented evidence supporting most of what has been written in this book. If there ever was an opportunity for compassion and improving the system, Matthew’s beating was that doorway for the “City of the Circle.” Some stepped up to the plate. They provided free advice and meals, wrote letters on their behalf, lobbied on the statehouse floor for more humane laws, and cast votes for safer schools and greater accountability. But many did not. They stood by and did nothing. Or they participated in a bullying fest on the family that ended in further tragedy. The Bean story partly is a study in man’s inhumanity to man, the destructive power of an unchecked system, and how one’s American Dream can be so easily dashed today by the abuse of power of a few. But it is also a story of triumph. Because the final message here for us all is that this is a story about a man’s innate sense of justice and its importance above all else in the human condition. It is a story of perseverance for good and one’s sense of right in the face of massive stumbling blocks. Sometimes it takes an innocent “outsider” to show us the faults that lie within a system that has evolved beyond its initial intended purpose. It is an opportunity for us all to remind ourselves that “all

69 men are created equal” and to reassess and make the necessary changes to protect our fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.

Possible Questions for Discussion Groups

These questions were compiled for church groups, book clubs, educators, and others interested in exploring some of the difficult questions raised by this book.

What were the real crimes committed in the Bean family story?

What would have been the appropriate response by the school district, school committee, Sheriff’s Department, and community in their response to the Bean family tragedy?

Several people expressed reservations about how the Beans were treated. However, they did what they were asked to do because they were concerned about the possible repercussions. What options are there if you are asked to do something that goes against your moral conscience?

How should the school administration have responded when Clem first hit Matthew on the bus?

Was the punishment for Clem appropriate? If not, what should law enforcement and the school district have done?

Are boot camps an appropriate way of dealing with children who have serious bullying problems? If not, what kinds of programs are appropriate?

What components make an effective anti-bullying law?

If you feel uncomfortable when someone is different than you because of their color, sexual preference, habits, religion, culture, age, or any other factor, what is the best way to resolve your judgmental feelings?

Why are tolerance and acceptance of our differences important for world peace?

What can happen when they are not expresses early on in relationships?

Appendix A HB 699 (The Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act)

1006.147 Bullying and harassment prohibited.— (1) This section may be cited as the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act.” (2) Bullying or harassment of any student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution is prohibited: (a) During any education program or activity conducted by a public K-12 educational institution; (b) During any school-related or school-sponsored program or activity or on a school bus of a public K-12 educational institution; or (c) Through the use of data or computer software that is accessed through a computer, computer system, or computer network of a public K-12 educational institution. (3) For purposes of this section: (a) Bullying” means systematically and chronically inflicting physical hurt or psychological distress on one or more students and may involve: 1. Teasing; 2. Social exclusion; 3. Threat; 4. Intimidation; 5. Stalking; 6. Physical violence; 7. Theft; 8. Sexual, religious, or racial harassment; 9. Public humiliation; or 10. Destruction of property.

(b) Harassment” means any threatening, insulting, or dehumanizing gesture, use of data or computer software, or written, verbal, or physical conduct directed against a student or school employee that: 1. Places a student or school employee in reasonable fear of harm to his or her person or damage to his or her property; 2. Has the effect of substantially interfering with a student’s educational performance, opportunities, or benefits; or 3. Has the effect of substantially disrupting the orderly operation of a school. (c) Definitions in s. 815.03 and the definition in s. 784.048(1)(d) relating to stalking are applicable to this section. (d) The definitions of “bullying” and “harassment” include: 1. Retaliation against a student or school employee by another student or school employee for asserting or alleging an act of bullying or harassment. Reporting an act of bullying or harassment that is not made in good faith is considered retaliation. 2. Perpetuation of conduct listed in paragraph (a) or paragraph (b) by an individual or group with intent to demean, dehumanize, embarrass, or cause physical harm to a student or school employee by: a. Incitement or coercion; b. Accessing or knowingly causing or providing access to data or computer software through a computer, computer system, or computer network within the scope of the district school system; or c. Acting in a manner that has an effect substantially similar to the effect of bullying or harassment. (4) By December 1, 2008, each school district shall adopt a policy prohibiting bullying and harassment of any student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution. Each school district’s policy shall be in substantial conformity with the Department of Education’s model policy mandated in subsection (5). The school district bullying and harassment policy shall afford all students the same protection regardless of their status under the law. The school district may establish separate discrimination policies that include categories of students. The school district shall involve students, parents, teachers, administrators, school staff, school volunteers, community representatives, and local law enforcement agencies in the process of adopting the policy. The school district policy must be implemented in a manner that is ongoing throughout the school year and integrated with a school’s curriculum, a school’s discipline policies, and other violent prevention efforts.

The school district policy must contain, at a minimum, the following components: (a) A statement prohibiting bullying and harassment. (b) A definition of bullying and a definition of harassment that include the definitions listed in this section. (c) A description of the type of behavior expected from each student and employee of a public K-12 educational institution. (d) The consequences for a student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution who commits an act of bullying or harassment. (e) The consequences for a student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution who is found to have wrongfully and intentionally accused another of an act of bullying or harassment. (f) A procedure for reporting an act of bullying or harassment, including provisions that permit a person to anonymously report such an act. However, this paragraph does not permit formal disciplinary action to be based solely on an anonymous report. (g) A procedure for the prompt investigation of a report of bullying or harassment and the persons responsible for the investigation. The investigation of a reported act of bullying or harassment is deemed to be a school-related activity and begins with a report of such an act. Incidents that require a reasonable investigation when reported to appropriate school authorities shall include alleged incidents of bullying or harassment allegedly committed against a child while the child is en route to school aboard a school bus or at a school bus stop. (h) A process to investigate whether a reported act of bullying or harassment is within the scope of the district school system and, if not, a process for referral of such an act to the appropriate jurisdiction. (i) A procedure for providing immediate notification to the parents of a victim of bullying or harassment and the parents of the perpetrator of an act of bullying or harassment, as well as notification to all local agencies where criminal charges may be pursued against the perpetrator. (j) A procedure to refer victims and perpetrators of bullying or harassment for counseling. (k) A procedure for including incidents of bullying or harassment in the school’s report of data concerning school safety and discipline required under s. 1006.09(6). The report must include each incident of bullying or harassment and the resulting consequences, including discipline and referrals. The report must include in a

73 separate section each reported incident of bullying or harassment that does not meet the criteria of a prohibited act under this section with recommendations regarding such incidents. The Department of Education shall aggregate information contained in the reports. (l) A procedure for providing instruction to students, parents, teachers, school administrators, counseling staff, and school volunteers on identifying, preventing, and responding to bullying or harassment. (m) A procedure for regularly reporting to a victim’s parents the actions taken to protect the victim. (n) A procedure for publicizing the policy, which must include its publication in the code of student conduct required under s. 1006.07(2) and in all employee handbooks. (5) To assist school districts in developing policies prohibiting bullying and harassment, the Department of Education shall develop a model policy that shall be provided to school districts no later than October 1, 2008. (6) A school employee, school volunteer, student, or parent who promptly reports in good faith an act of bullying or harassment to the appropriate school official designated in the school district’s policy and who makes this report in compliance with the procedures set forth in the policy is immune from a cause of action for damages arising out of the reporting itself or any failure to remedy the reported incident. (7)(a) The physical location or time of access of a computer-related incident cannot be raised as a defense in any disciplinary action initiated under this section. (b) This section does not apply to any person who uses data or computer software that is accessed through a computer, computer system, or computer network when acting within the scope of his or her lawful employment or investigating a violation of this section in accordance with school district policy. (8) Distribution of safe schools funds to a school district provided in the 2009- 2010 General Appropriations Act is contingent upon and payable to the school district upon the Department of Education’s approval of the school district’s bullying and harassment policy. The department’s approval of each school district’s bullying and harassment policy shall be granted upon certification by the department that the school district’s policy has been submitted to the department and is in substantial conformity with the department’s model bullying and harassment policy as mandated in subsection (5). Distribution of safe schools funds provided to a

74 school district in fiscal year 2010-2011 and thereafter shall be contingent upon and payable to the school district upon the school district’s compliance with all reporting procedures contained in this section. (9) On or before January 1 of each year, the Commissioner of Education shall report to the Governor, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the implementation of this section. The report shall include data collected pursuant to paragraph (4)(k). (10) Nothing in this section shall be construed to abridge the rights of students or school employees that are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Appendix B Amendment to the Florida 2012-13 Budget Safe Schools Priviso Language

From the funds in Specific Appropriations 6 and 84, $64,456,019 is provided for Safe Schools activities and shall be allocated as follows: $62,660 shall be distributed to each district, and the remaining balance shall be allocated as follows: two-thirds based on the latest official Florida Crime Index provided by the Department of Law Enforcement and one-third based on each district’s share of the state’s total unweighted student enrollment. Safe Schools activities include: (1) after school programs for middle school students; (2) middle and high school programs for correction of specific discipline problems; (3) other improvements to enhance the learning environment, including implementation of conflict resolution strategies; (4) behavior driven intervention programs that include anger and aggression management strategies; (5)alternative school programs for adjudicated youth that may include a web-based virtual system that results in mastery and certification, competency or credentials in the following inter-related counseling disciplines necessary for success in education and the work environment, including adjustment, educational, employment and optimal mental health areas that will include, but are not limited to, anger and impulse control, depression and anxiety, self-esteem, respect for authority, personal behavior, goal setting, time and

75 stress management, social and workplace adjustment, substance use and abuse, workplace soft skills, communication skills, work ethic, the importance of timeliness, attendance and the self-marketing skills for future educational and/or employment opportunities; (6) suicide prevention programs; (7) bullying prevention and intervention; and (8) school resource officers. Each district shall determine, based on a review of its existing programs and priorities, how much of its total allocation to use for each authorized Safe Schools activity. The Department of Education shall monitor compliance with reporting procedures contained in section 1006.147, Florida Statutes. If a district does not comply with these procedures, the district’s funds from the Safe Schools allocation shall be withheld and reallocated to the other school districts. Each school district shall report to the Department of Education the amount of funds expended for each of the eight activities.

Appendix C

The following article appeared on my website, www.BobbieBean.com, during the 2010 US Senate race. Mr. Bean Opens Investigation into Highlands County Safe Schools Funds Raises Questions about Lack of Anti-Bullying Programs and Use of Federal Dollars for a “Boot Camp”

Bobbie Bean, a candidate for the US Senate, launched an investigation today into the way the Highlands County School Board is dispersing and using its Florida Safe Schools funding. Mr. Bean is questioning why the vast majority of Highlands County’s federal Safe Schools funding is going to the Highlands County Sheriff and Police Departments and a “boot camp.” The funds are allocated by the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE).

Many Florida schools use Safe Schools funds for anti-bullying educational programs starting as early as kindergarten, but Highlands County’s federal dollars are being

76 funneled to law enforcement for job creation, Mr. Bean says. According to House Bill 5001, Safe Schools funds should be used for “school programs for middle school students; other improvements to enhance the learning environment, including implementation of conflict resolution strategies; alternative school programs for adjudicated youth; suicide prevention programs; and other improvements to make the school a safe place to learn.”

“Our society needs stronger preventative measures at a time when we’re seeing very serious bullying and harassment problems among children, such as the case of Michael Brewer of Ft. Lauderdale, who was lit on fire by a group of boys, or Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide after she was severely bullied and harassed by a group of girls in Massachusetts,” he notes. “We need to address the violence and bullying problems in America with early education, more anti-bullying programs and activities, awareness literature, and other preventative measures.”

Over a 5-year period, Safe Schools payments from the Highlands County School Board to law enforcement agencies more than quadrupled – from $173,404 in 2003 to $745,490 in 2008. The vast majority of the funding went toward school resource and “boot camp” officers.

For example, in the 2006-07 school year, Highlands County used their funds only for school and “boot camp” resource officers, according to the FLDOE. By comparison, Broward County used funds for preventative measures such as “the enhancement of existing programs for Alternative Placement Programs for Adjudicated Youth. Additionally, funds were utilized for training teachers/staff, providing school resource/school safety officers, funding district-level positions for Safe Schools activities.” Collier County “utilized funds to support Middle School After-School Programs and to fund district-level positions for Safe Schools activities.” FLDOE 2006-07 county Safe Schools allocations: http://www.fldoe.org/safeschools/pdf/2006_07_ss_allocation.pdf

“Highlands is creating a time bomb” by not having more preventative programs, Bean says. “The situation in Highlands County shows that these federal funds should be monitored more closely.” According to Florida House Bill 5001, “$65,387 shall be distributed to each district, and the remaining balance shall be allocated as follows: two-thirds based on the latest official Florida Crime Index provided by the

Department of Law Enforcement and one-third based on each district’s share of the state’s total unweighted student enrollment.”

A portion of Highlands County’s Safe Schools funds gets allocated toward a boot camp each year. In 2004, the School Board created the Academy at Youth Care Lane as an “alternative to expulsion for Highlands County students in grades six through 12.” It emphasizes “marching drills, calisthenics, a rigid dress code, manual labor assignments, physical training with obstacle courses,” according to a document obtained by the Bean campaign. Dr. Rodney Hollinger, assistant superintendent of the Highlands County School Board and coordinator of the program, says the Academy is the only one of its kind in Florida.

“Every day we had to do drills and drink water until we threw up,” said one 19-year- old Sebring resident who was placed at the Academy at Youth Care Lane after punching a child at school. He described the program as “too rigorous.” A parent whose child was placed at the Academy described it as a “strenuous and scary program for a teenager,” according to a letter written to Superintendent Wally Cox that was obtained by the Bean campaign.

The Highlands County School Board created the Academy at a time when boot camps were being questioned as a safe and effective means of discipline. Critics say boot camps can be dangerous, are a questionable way of changing aggressive behaviors, and can exacerbate behavior problems. Many states and counties have dissolved boot camp programs over the last several years. In Florida, a boot camp in Polk County was the focus of intense media scrutiny when a 12-year-old boy was exercised to death by drill instructors.

Meanwhile, a survey by the Bean campaign last fall found no anti-bullying pamphlets or brochures available from the school district, local law enforcement, children’s agencies, the Chamber of Commerce, or at kiosks in the mall in Sebring, Fla. The only anti-bullying information or program manual provided by a high school resource officer was the Federal D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Program) notebook, which is customarily used by school districts nationwide.

The survey found that the non-profit Highlands County Boys and Girls Clubs of Sebring and Avon Park were actively working on preventative measures. Among

78 their activities is an annual joint outing to a major big league sports event to diffuse tensions between youth gangs in the two communities.

In an effort to track Safe Schools funding in more current years, the Bean campaign inquired about allocations to Highlands County in the 2007-08. “The survey period has closed and copies of the submitted surveys were not compiled in an easily readable format. It would be more timely and perhaps more meaningful for the questions to be posed directly to this district contact,” wrote the FLDOE in response to the request.

An exchange was started with Pat Landress, head of Federal Programs at the Highlands County School Board: “For the past 2 years our district has used Safe and Drug Free funds to pay for an Addictions Specialist who works with our students (and their families) who are assigned to our alternative school,” she wrote. “In 07-08 we used some funds for bullying, and although our grant did not originally show it, we did use some 08-09 funds to send guidance counselors to bullying conferences.”

When asked to provide invoices and cancelled checks for those projects, the Bean campaign received the following response: “Sorry, the person who was in charge of this retired—I don’t know where her records are.”

FLDOE was able to provide this information for Broward and Collier County funds for the 2007-08 year: “Broward—Their funds went to funding after-school programs, alternative placement programs for adjudicated youth, and school safety and security program activities which resulted in funding SROs, district level positions and research. Collier—Their funds went to funding after-school programs and district- level positions for school safety and security program activities.”

2007-08 allocations: http://www.fldoe.org/safeschools/pdf/2007_08_ss_allocation.pdf

The following information describes how Safe Schools funding was used for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 years for all three counties:

2008-09

Highlands—Project SUCCESS—a substance abuse/use prevention program for students grades 6-12. (There was no mention of programs related to bullying or violence prevention.)

Broward—Project B.L.A.S.T. Building Lasting Attitudes & Strategies for Tomorrow (a substance abuse/use and violence prevention program for students grades K-12); CHAMPS (a violence prevention and school-wide climate program for staff (and ultimately students) grades K-12).

Collier—Navigator (a substance abuse/use and violence prevention program for students in grade 8); Positive Behavior Support (PBS) (a violence prevention and school-wide climate program for staff and students grades K-8); Comprehensive Health (a substance abuse/use and violence prevention program for students grades K-12).

2008-09 allocations: http://www.fldoe.org/safeschools/pdf/2008_09_ss_allocation.pdf

2009-10

Highlands—Project SUCCESS—a substance abuse/use prevention program for students grades 6-12. (There was no mention of programs related to bullying or violence prevention.)

Broward—Project B.L.A.S.T. Building Lasting Attitudes & Strategies for Tomorrow (a substance abuse/use and violence prevention program for students grades K-12), and CHAMPs (a violence prevention and school-wide climate program for staff (and ultimately students) grades K-12).

Collier—Too Good for Drugs (a substance abuse/use and violence prevention program for students grades 6-8). http://www.fldoe.org/safeschools/pdf/2009_10_ss_allocation.pdf

Payments to the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office School Resource and Academy Officers from Federal Safe Schools Funds Sent to the Highlands County School Board

The numbers below reflect allocations for school and Academy resource officers only. The Bean campaign was unable to obtain total annual expenditures for the Academy program, despite numerous requests of the Highlands County School Board beginning in November 2009.

YEAR CUT TO AMOUNT

6-30-03 County Commissioners $173,404

5-28-04 County Commissioners $175,743

4-22-05 County Commissioners $176,661

4-21-06 County Commissioners $238,533

1-19-07 County Commissioners $357,732

3-21-08 County Commissioners $370,294

10-10-08 Sheriff’s Office* $383,432

*In July, 2008, an agreement was signed between the School Board and Sheriff’s Office for these monies from 7/1/08-6/30/09. Use of this Safe Schools money as described in one voucher includes “Background checks, conc weapons permits, community maint, fingerprints, meals, school res. officers.” We were later told that the 10-10-08 check was cut to the Sheriff’s Office by mistake, and should have gone to the County Commissioners for distribution, which it eventually did.

Appendix C

The following article was written for my website in response to the frustrating experience our family had with the Florida Bar. Since that time, I have heard from several Florida residents of similar challenges with the Florida Bar. The Time I Busted the Florida Bar

Time and time again, residents of the state of Florida have experienced frustration and disappointment with the Florida Bar. My first experience with the Florida Bar proved that the organization is fraught with good-ol’-boy politics where “who you know” is more important than judicial integrity. Our introduction to the Florida Bar began in 2004, when our neighbor, Dr. Ronald Owens, attempted to obtain a permit for a lighted airport runway that would run beside our rural property line. It turned into a contentious battle. After I cited several safety issues at a Highlands County Board of Adjustment meeting, which were backed up by the Federal Aviation Administration, his permit was denied. Two weeks later, the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office arrested me for cutting a fence (and allegedly letting cows out) that suddenly appeared across the deeded access road to my property (see “Our Family Story” on this website). I cut the fence to allow my wife and mother-in-law to pass through the gate with a car full of groceries. We had been using that access road unobstructed for many years. At the advice of Alister Ibrahim of Gator Title, I hired the firm Keough & DuBose, P.A.. Attorney Keogh convinced me that the charge was a serious federal offense, and I could spend a year in prison. Because we were financially strapped due to extensive medical bills resulting from our son’s serious injuries from a bullying incident at the Highlands County Middle School, we were forced to put a 10- and 5-acre parcel of our land on the market.

Initially, the law firm convinced us to sign a promissory note for the entire property, including the house. But we found out that the note was misleading, and we demanded to have it annulled. Meanwhile, Mr. Ibrahim, Sheriff Susan Benton’s granddaughter, and the daughter of former code enforcer Gary Laurey all offered low bids on the 10-acre parcel. We finally sold it to a local doctor, Dr. Kevin Roberts, who turned out to be a friend of Ibrahim’s. The 5-acre parcel was put up for auction and sold to a relative of Dr. Ronald Owens, the neighbor who was denied a runway permit. I never thought someone would take advantage of a family with burgeoning medical bills and an ongoing crisis with their son. But Keough & DuBose convinced me that the fence-cutting offense was so serious that we ended up paying $15,000 to them to keep me out of jail for an offense that we later found out, according to Florida state records, was a mere $125 bail. It was the same bail paid for selling fish and frogs without a license. We managed to keep our house, but after all of the legal bills, we lost 15 prime acres. We also found out from someone who had worked for over 15 years at the Animal Control Department for Highland’s County that no one, other than myself, had ever been arrested for cutting a fence and letting cows out during that time. She had dealt with a whopping 75,000 “cow out” calls. Several years later, before I realized what had happened, I tried to hire Keough & DuBose again to look into the questionable manner in which the Sheriff’s Office and Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) handled our son’s bullying case. They refused to take the case, citing a conflict of interest. How could Keough & DuBose handle my bogus arrest by the Sheriff’s Office several years earlier, but not represent us in a probe into the same department’s handling of our son’s bullying case? In a letter dated Oct. 4, 2007, fax #3197, to Bobbie and Carolyn Bean, Attorney John DuBose stated: “As we discussed with you on Tuesday, we have an ongoing relationship with the State of Florida and represented various state agencies through State risk management program. In that regard, we routinely represent various state attorneys offices, public defenders offices, and other constitutional officers. Therefore, we would have a conflict of interest bringing any action against an officer or employees of the State of Florida, including officers or employees of the Highlands County Sheriffs Office or officers or employees of the State Attorneys Office for the the Tenth Judicial Circuit, and we must decline to represent your interests in any such action.”

If Keough & DuBose couldn’t represent me because of a conflict of interest, then they shouldn’t have represented me in the fence episode. They failed to disclose their relationship with state agencies to me at that time. In fact, they should have declined representation at that time based on their relationship with any state agencies. One can conclude that it was an orchestrated scheme. When I sent two complaint letters to the Florida Bar regarding the questionable response by Keough & DuBose, they refused to address the clear conflict of interest. It became clear that the deck was stacked against us from the very beginning. A group of high-placed individuals within the community set us up and tried to steal our house and property right out from under us. But I held the Ace of Diamonds, because in the end, I managed to clearly expose the corruption and favoritism within the Florida Bar. If I’m elected to office, I will again.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Bobbie Bean is a one-time candidate for the office of United States Senate from the state of Florida. He ran in the 2010 election after becoming acutely aware of systemic problems within the US educational, judicial, and law enforcement systems. That awareness prompted him to join a coalition of concerned parents and legislators and lobby for change at the state and federal level, which resulted in new laws to protect the social and civil rights of children in Florida’s schools. The Jeffrey Johnson Stand Up for All Students Act (HB #575) eventually passed unanimously on both floors in April, 2008. Mr. Bean has been outspoken in public forums in an effort to raise awareness about public education, the need for safer schools, and the challenges of dealing with public school districts that violate civil rights and inappropriately handle situations. A small farmer and former printer, Mr. Bean also is a former weightlifter who won state, national, and the international championship, and was ranked among the Top 40 weightlifters in the world. He is now a personal trainer living in Sebring, Fla.

Credits: Book cover design by Hari Krishnan, p+d , www.plananddesignsite.com; Cover art by Kaptured by Katara, Sebring, Florida.

Upon reflection, I realized that this bill was nothing more than a money cow for law-enforcement, and when writing this book, I had jeopardized my own safety as I was told by officers something could be left in the back of my truck. It later occurred to me that they could easily plant anything in my property. I found the corruption went as far as Charlie Crist, Commissioner Bailey, the Florida Bar Association, and the FBI. I did learn the golden rule of the Sheriff organization in Highlands County. They would murder a child and bury them in the playground to keep their image shiny. As I found out later on, the Bully Bill was passed 33 years prior and backed by the teachers’ union, dictation system and law enforcement agencies. They should have crafted a much stronger bill during this time, but we may never know why they didn’t. I never did get any justice.

The End