How Videos Helped Me Uncover Abuse at an Arkansas Private School

ProPublica reports on an investigation into the Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, a private Arkansas school where video footage captured its owner mistreating children. The school's founder, Mary "Tracy" Morrison, an occupational therapist who had never run a school before, was recorded directing students to put their hands on a thirteen-year-old boy seated in a circle, striking him herself with a plastic cylinder, and ordering children to scrub floors as punishment. According to ProPublica, Morrison was charged with eleven felony counts, pleaded guilty to permitting child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, and was sentenced to thirty days in jail. Reporter Jennifer Smith Richards obtained the videos through open-records requests, and frames the case as evidence of a systemic gap: as more public money flows to private schools, most operate with little oversight, and in Arkansas the state sets no rules on who may open one.

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