Six NHS Students Charged In Restraint Incident

By Andrew Gorosko

Police have arrested six students and plan a seventh arrest in connection with an incident at a student detention program at Newtown High School on a Saturday morning last February, at which the youths allegedly bound another student to a chair against the victim’s protests, videotaped the incident, and then posted a video clip and a still picture of the incident on the Internet.

Five of the six male youths who have been charged by police are considered “youthful offenders,” meaning they are 16 or 17 years old and their identities are shielded from disclosure by state law.

The first youth whom police charged, however is 18. He is Matthew Cluff of 1 Smoke Rise Ridge, who police charged on June 18 with first-degree unlawful restraint, first-degree reckless endangerment, and third-degree assault. He was released on a written promise to appear for arraignment in Danbury Superior Court on July 8.

Police have released the other five youths from custody on written promises to appear on upcoming dates in Danbury Youthful Offender Court, which is closed to the public.

Police said they also are seeking an arrest warrant for a girl under age 16 in connection with the alleged assault. That case would be adjudicated in Danbury Juvenile Court, which is closed to the public.

Among the five male youthful offenders who have been arrested in the case, three of them were each charged with first-degree unlawful restraint, first-degree reckless endangerment, and third-degree assault, police said.

One other youth was arrested on those three charges, plus one count of second-degree threatening. Also, one youth was charged only with third-degree assault, police said.

The extent of the charges against each youth is based on the level of involvement in the incident, police said.

In Detention

On Saturday, February 9, the eight youths were attending a school detention program for students who had violated school rules. The students were supposed to handle school cleanup chores that day.

But members of the group instead allegedly used a roll of clear plastic wrap, which typically is used for packaging, to bind a 16-year-old boy to a chair against his will and videotaped the act, later posting a video clip on the YouTube website and a still image from the video clip on the Facebook website.

The youths allegedly placed the victim, who was trapped on the chair, atop a dolly, and then wheeled the dolly down a hallway in the school. The chair toppled over and the victim fell onto the floor, receiving a head injury, which did not require a hospital visit, according to police.

The assailants also wrote on the victim’s face with a marking pen, according to police.

Police said they learned of the incident when an unidentified person later provided them with a computer disk that contained the Facebook website image of the trapped youth.

“The picture showed a 16-year-old male Newtown High School student [victim] bound to a chair with packing wrap, surrounded by Cluff and three other Newtown High School students,” police said in a statement.

Police then investigated with the aid of school officials, finding that the Facebook image had been taken from a video clip of the incident that had been posted on YouTube.

“The 16-year-old victim suffered some physical injury from the incident,” resulting in the assault charge, police said.

Police Sergeant Aaron Bahamonde said, “After reviewing the video, I did not consider the situation a prank…It was definitely a situation where an individual was restrained against his will and assaulted against his will…I frankly was quite disturbed by what I saw.”

First-degree unlawful restraint is a felony.

The police investigation into the incident involved much work by Officer Domenic Costello, who is the school resource officer for the high school, said Sgt Bahamonde.

Police Chief Michael Kehoe said it is clear to police that the victim of the incident was not a willing participant, and thus the incident is a criminal matter requiring arrests.

A growing number of people are getting themselves into trouble with the law due to their Internet-related activities, the police chief observed.

Police evidence in the case includes the video clip that was formerly posted on YouTube and the still image formerly posted on Facebook, he said.

Newtown High School Principal Charles Dumais said this week, “It’s an open case and a student disciplinary matter, and I cannot comment on it.

“The school did an investigation and there were consequences,” he said, in apparent reference to some penalties being levied against the youths involved in the wrongdoing.

“It appears to be occurring in numerous places across the country,” Mr Dumais said of youths posting such recordings on the Internet.

 School Superintendent Janet Robinson said, “When it’s a student disciplinary issue, there’s very little I can say.”

After school officials learned of the incident, they investigated and appropriate action was taken, she said.

Dr Robinson said the school system is taking steps to address the problem of students intimidating other students.

“Our high school, along with many other high schools in the country, wants to deal with [the problems of] meanness and a lack of empathy” among students, she said. School officials are working to foster a sense of empathy among students, she said.

Rich Hanley, an assistant professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, is a specialist in Internet studies. “The evidence is clear that the Facebook generation doesn’t quite ‘get’ the technology they adore and live within. If they post images of stupid or illegal behavior, someone will see it. After all, that’s the point. But it can and will be used against them now and in the future,” he said.

“It’s not unusual for young people to do this sort of thing…This [Internet] medium is all about self-expression,” he said.

The participants in such behavior are naïve and do not have a sense that posted recordings of their activities will be seen across the wide reaches of the Internet, he said.

“It’s a stunt culture,” symbolized by the former MTV television program titled “Jackass,” which featured people performing as variety of outlandish stunts and pranks, he said.

The motivation for such postings is that the participants want to be noticed on the Internet, he said. But the power of technology far exceeds the culture within which that technology exists, he said.

Police have developed more sophisticated techniques to investigate Internet-related crime, Prof Hanley noted.