The mother of a 5-year-old boy, who was voted out of his class Survivor-style encouraged by his class teacher, has voiced her intention of filing a lawsuit against the school administration.

The story of Alex Barton, a Port St. Lucie preschooler - who is in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, an advanced form of autism, has shocked parents and educators around the country. His classmates were asked by their teacher, Wendy Portillo, to list out all he things that they hated about Alex to his face, and they then voted the boy out of the class, 14-2. Miss Portillo has been watching too many reality shows, besides being an absolutely unfit teacher.

After the incident, Alex, his mother says, was sent to the school office where he sat broken and afraid, waiting for his mother to pick him up. His mother, Melissa, says, since then the child has been petrified at the thought of going back to school, going into hysterics every time they approach the school to drop off a sibling, and telling his mom he feels he’s “not special.”

His mother, who has taken her story nationwide, and even appeared on the CBS Morning Show, is considering her legal options in the case. She has filed a complaint with the school’s resource center for the treatment of her son, but strangely the district attorney’s office has claimed that the case did not meet the criteria of emotional abuse. No charges have been filed against Wendy Portillo.
Shockingly enough, Ms Portillo was not suspended immediately after the incident came to light. She has only now been reassigned while further a course of action is determined.

Melissa says that Alex has had disciplinary problems brought on by his condition. He is currently undergoing evaluation for autism, and the school district and the board have been aware of Alex’s condition. Even Wendy Portillo was present at the meetings and she was aware of Alex’s special needs.

As the mother of a differently abled child, Melissa was no doubt prepared for him to be treated differently at different stages in his life. Autistic children tend to have trouble expressing emotions, giving the impression they have none, which is not the case at all. But to experience such vicious behavior from a teacher in whose care you entrusted your child is inexcusable. No matter how many ways you try to look at Wendy Portillo’s side of things (who by the way, has not defended herself, and not even attempted to deny her behavior), there is simply no excuse for what one online publication accurately called “psychological lynching” of a child.

It’s strange that an incident like this, which would have been enough to scar an adult, is not being taken seriously enough to be considered emotional abuse. This is a five-year-old child. How much more abusive can you get than to round up all his classmates and have them call him names like “annoying“ and “disgusting” before finally voting him out of the class? It really begins to make you worry about our threshold for child abuse tolerance. It seems we’re just not willing to take the victim’s side here.

As the country finds itself in a recession triggered by a collapse in home prices and foreclosures by home owners who find their homes have depreciated sharply since they were purchased, we are beginning to find examples of the kind of deceit and lies that marked the house buying frenzy of the past decade. As experts now realize, part of the recession is the result of the inflation of house prices by unscrupulous builders and appraisers.

This unholy nexus between the builders who want to dispose of their properties at a higher price, and appraisers who are willing to help them do it is now in the spotlight. Two California couples are suing Los Angeles-based builder KB Home a unit of lender Countrywide Financial Corporation. The allegations are KB Home “conspired with appraisers” to create fraudulent appraisal reports that led to the plaintiffs paying much more for their houses than was the going market rate. In other words, the builder used deceit to prop up the prices of their properties.

One of the couples, the Boldens, claim that they paid up to $70,000 more for their property than their neighbors. The neighbors in question, it appears, used independent financing and had their own appraisers conduct an evaluation of the property. The properties in question are part of KB Home’s property development in Live Oak, north of Sacramento.

The Boldens allege that the appraiser affiliated with KB Home compared prices to homes in other KB Home developments instead of the immediate area, as is the norm. The Boldens paid $475,000 for their 5-bedroom property. A neighbor later told them that they had used their own appraiser and managed to cut the price of the house from the contract price of $469,000 to $408,000. This was when the scam came to light.

These kind of unscrupulous measures are what fed the house buying frenzy that had millions of hopefuls lining up for financing to buy the house of their dreams. KB Home on its part has strongly denied the allegations and has asserted that they would vigorously defend themselves.

It’s not clear how they will do that since the odds are stacked so highly against them. One of their own former employees has alleged that the lenders gave loans to unqualified borrowers so KB Home could keep on building new properties for sale. Former Countrywide KB Home Loan Vice president Mark Zachary said he was fired after he questioned these unethical practices at the company. According to Zachary, appraisers were routinely asked by the company to inflate prices by as much as 6 per cent.

This kind of unrestricted loaning of money was at least partly responsible for the housing market collapse and the resulting economic recession. As the news of the lawsuit spreads we can expect to find more house owners come out of the woodwork to accuse KB home of fraudulent appraisals and artificial inflation of house prices.

KB Home may protest its innocence as much as they want to, but something does smell rotten in Denmark.