Child Abuse Concerns & My Experience
In my personal experience, the pattern of behaviour I witnessed from Nuphar has involved dishonesty, manipulation, and actions that I believe have caused significant emotional harm to a child. What follows reflects my firsthand observations, my perspective, and my interpretation of events.
Failure to Report a Classroom Incident
I was present during an incident in her classroom where a student was harmed. From my perspective, she did not report what happened, despite being a witness. In my view, this represented a serious failure in her responsibilities as a teacher.
Based on what I observed, I believe she attempted to protect a senior staff member rather than the child involved. This is my personal account of what occurred.
A Pattern of Harmful Behaviour
Following that incident, I experienced what I believe to be a pattern of behaviour that caused emotional harm to both the child and the child’s relationship with his father.
From my perspective, this included:
- actions that contributed to parental alienation
- behaviour that interfered with the child’s relationship with his father
- statements that I believe were misleading or untrue
- decisions that, in my view, removed the child’s access to both parents
In my experience, removing a loving parent from a child’s life is deeply damaging and can be considered a form of emotional harm.
Emotional Manipulation & Parental Alienation
Based on what I witnessed, I believe the child was influenced in ways that encouraged rejection of the targeted parent. To me, this is a form of emotional manipulation and has long‑term consequences for a child’s wellbeing.
I personally view parental alienation as a form of emotional abuse, and I believe this behaviour continued over an extended period.
Court Proceedings & My Interpretation
During court proceedings, my understanding is that certain behaviours were acknowledged on the record. From my perspective, these admissions supported my concerns about the emotional impact on the child.
However, in my experience, the Ontario family law system did not adequately address these issues or protect the established relationship between father and child.
This is my personal interpretation of how the system responded.
My Concern for Other Parents
If your child is in her classroom, you may wish to ask the school about the incident I witnessed and the handling of that situation. In my experience, a teacher’s willingness to report or not report incidents involving students is an important part of ensuring child safety.
My concern is based on what I personally observed and lived through.
My philosophy of teaching is to reach all students. As a caring, empathetic, and inclusive educator, it is imperative for me to create an environment that makes students feel safe and wanted. This helps students engage successfully both inside and outside of the educational system in order to be socialized into productive members of society. I believe doing this increases students’ self-esteem, which is crucial to help them learn.
Teachers are role models and agents of the emotional-psycho-social socialization process of children. I believe teachers are there to help students to strive to their fullest potential as role models. I do this by utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that addresses not only the needs of the various types of learners (i.e. kinaesthetic, auditory, visual, etc.), but also to ensure students have a positive teaching and learning experience at every level of their development. Using manipulatives and interactive activities/ strategies (i.e. power-points, videos, cubes, songs, toys, games, etc.) and assistive/ instructional technologies (i.e. PowerPoint, kurzweil, inspiration, socrative, symbaloo) allow me to ensure students are engaged and learning the basic skills needed to thrive interpersonally and intrapersonally. In addition, my background in Linguistics, working with exceptional students, I am trained to work with students in different levels of competency. It is important for teachers to embrace diversity and difference when educating. I use this to make the teaching and learning meaningful to all my students so that they are empowered. Focus is placed on my students’ strengths, uniqueness and differences. It is essential to do this by working collaboratively with parents, schools, teachers and professionals to propel exceptional students into greatness.
Yoni Shiewitz