A father in New Jersey was notified by his school that his autistic 10 year old son Akian was violent in his classes. Stuart Chaifetz had never known his son to be violent, so he wanted to know what was happening. He had a meeting with the IEP team. A behaviorist was called in to do a report. Nothing came up that would explain Akian’s outbursts – even when provoked by the behaviorist.

Chaifetz suspected the worst – that his son was being bullied by his teacher. So, he put a wire on him and recorded six hours of audio. It changed Chaifetz’s life.

“What I heard on that audio was so disgusting, vile, and just an absolute disrespect and bullying of my son,” says Chaifetz in a video he posted on his website, “…that happened not by other children, but by his teacher and the aides, the people who are supposed to protect him.”

I needed to do this, for my 19-month-old daughter. I needed to know the answers before she begins to ask the question, “Why?”. I needed to know what it’s like now, as an adult and as a father.

My family visited the L.A. Zoo this past Saturday. My wife, an animal rights advocate, painfully went along with my plan after some time of convincing. The plan was to visit my father, who was doing a remote broadcast for the radio station he works for in the Los Angeles area. I wanted to show our support for him and expose our daughter to some extremely unfamiliar sights and sounds: the people of Los Angeles.