After two years of fighting child-abuse charges, autism teacher Rhona Silver was cleared. A look at the journey, its costs and its casualties. by Julie Delegal
R
with additional reporting by Anne Schindler Photos by Walter Coker
hona Silver remembers being in a festive mood that fateful morning in 2009. “It was St. Patrick’s Day,” she recalls. “I had brought in some earrings I made, and I put little plastic shamrocks on them.” At that time, Silver was working at the Duval County school district’s Bull’s Bay Highway facility — a kind of waystation for educators in trouble. Silver had been accused several months before of abusing the autistic kids in her care, and school officials, per standard procedure, removed her from the classroom while they investigated. Silver was deeply upset by the accusations, but never really feared them. She had faith that the truth would prevail, she says; she believed the whole thing would blow over. That changed in a matter of hours. That morning, Silver was arrested, frogmarched out of work, fingerprinted and placed in an inmate intake area that had “lots of stainless steel.” She recalls the episode with a mixture of disbelief and residual fear. “I was blindsided,” she says of the arrival of the three officers. “It was so surreal.” By the next day, Silver’s face would be familiar to every consumer of local news, her dazed mugshot splashed across front page of the T-U’s Metro section, and every news station’s crime report. “She became a leper on the day after her arrest,” says her attorney, Bill Sheppard. “Everybody has a great deal of empathy for handicapped children. [There’s] out-and-out hatred and disgust for anyone accused of abusing one of [them].” Unlike a leper, however, Silver wasn’t sent to live in some distant colony while the investigation continued. Instead, for the ensuing 23 months, she faced the open scorn of former colleagues, the sadness and confusion of friends, the revulsion of strangers. She also emptied her life savings, spending some $35,000 to mount the first few months of her legal defense, working any job that would have her to earn an income, from floor sweeper to dog washer. At times, she admits, she just wanted to give up. “I’ve decided that I can’t do this anymore,” she told Folio Weekly in late December 2010. To avoid another new year of conflict and no income, Silver said she was going give up her court fight and negotiate for her pension. Her attorneys persuaded her to fight a little longer, however, and two weeks later, an administrative law judge issued a scathing dismissal of the case against her. The judge’s order called into question not only the probity of Silver’s accusers, but the system that ensnared her. Although Silver was cleared, and reinstated
march 29-april 4, 2011 | folio weekly | 13