West Plains, Mo. – A non-verbal autistic child was abused multiple times by staff at the Ozark Horizon State School in West Plains in March of this year. Three of the staff had been fired after the incidents and three others were fired following an investigation. As of August 10, 2022, those six individuals are now facing felony charges.
Ozark Radio News has received probable cause statements for five of the six women being charged with Abuse or Neglect of a Child and Endangering the Welfare Child, both felonies.
Those charged are Barbara Baker of West Plains, Barbara Stark of Winona, Cheryl Silva, Karen Gore of Mountain View, Teresia Huddleston of Birch Tree, and Vernetta Burgess of West Plains. All of these women were mandated reporters at the time of the abuse.
Warning: the following details the abuse of a child
The charges pertain to multiple instances of abuse that occurred in March of 2022. From information gleaned from the probable cause statements, Burgess and Baker had observed the abuse of a 13-year old non-verbal autistic boy and had not reported it.
Stark had been observed assaulting the child twice, once striking the child hard enough to knock him out of his seat and strike his head against a nearby wall.
Huddleston had been observed assaulting the child twice, forcefully pinning the child and kicking him.
Gore had assaulted the boy six times. These included forcefully pinning the child’s head and chest against a desk, pulling his hair multiple times while being quoted as saying “Yeah? That hurts a little, doesn’t it?”
As of the time of writing this, none of the women have been arrested. The accused will have their first day in court on September 12, 2022 before Judge Robert David Ray in the Howell County Courthouse.
