ATLANTA (WXIA) -- Two years ago, Melanie Pickens was arrested and indicted for 11 counts of child abuse. But, so far at least, the courts have ruled that she can't be prosecuted -- because, as an educator, Georgia law gives her immunity.
That also means, according to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, it also gave her a license to hurt defenseless special needs kids.
"If we can get some justice, if we can get some justice for the pain we suffered; that we are suffering and we continue suffer, that would help," said mother Franka Persadi.
Persadi speaks deliberately in a thick and elegant patois, controlling the anger and pain welling within her. Her eyes well and overflow with tears. Indeed, the crying has never stopped -- ever since that day she learned Pickens, her daughter's teacher, was running what prosecutors and parents believe was a classroom of horrors.
"All these families have been affected; eight families," she said. "And our lives will never ever be the same again. The hopes and dreams that I had that she would go forward, that she would learn, that she would do something -- it didn't happen."
Her daughter Repheka, who has Downs Syndrome, was 13 when she had Pickens for a teacher -- a teacher accused of degrading and abusing and tormenting special needs kids for years at Hopewell Middle School in Fulton County.
Knowing that Pickens may never be prosecuted makes Persadi afraid that it is now open season on disabled children.
"If you abuse an animal they put you in jail," she said angrily. "But these are human beings -- human beings that they have no kind of care for. They treat dogs and cats better than they have treated us."
Persadi says she will never know what her daughter witnessed in that room. But what she does know sickens her, like the allegation that Pickens sprayed Lysol on Repheka's privates.
"And it's so unfair and unjust that you try not to focus on it. You just try to move on," she said.
Pickens' defense attorney, B.J. Bernstein said that despite the emotion of the case, the law is clear. But the families involved say that does not make it right.
