Isolation, hogties, handcuffs and Velcro

By Ken Watts

Their voices cracked with emotion as they recalled a devastating loss. Don and Tina King's 13-year old son Jonathan hanged himself after a teacher locked him in a windowless 8X8 closet called a "seclusion room." Jonathan was a student in the Alpine Program, a public school in Gainesville, Ga. for students with emotional and behavioral problems.  A few weeks before his death in 2004, Jonathan told his parents that teachers had put him in "time out." "After he died, we found out that Jonathan wasn't in there for minutes," Don King said.