ACTIONS FILED IN CHILD-ABUSE INVESTIGATION FORMER SPECIAL-ED AIDE CHARGED.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO

Staff Writer

PALMDALE -- Criminal charges and civil lawsuits have resulted from allegations that special-education students were abused at Manzanita Elementary School.

Gloria Kleeh, 61, a former instructional aide in the Palmdale School District, is charged with two misdemeanor counts of cruelty to a child by inflicting injury. The victims are a boy and a girl, both 7 at the time of the fall 2004 incidents.

"It's a really egregious and shocking story," said Angela Gilmartin, an attorney representing the boy, who is autistic and "nonverbal," in two civil lawsuits, one filed just recently against the district that brought the case to light.

The boy's mother only became aware of the incident involving her son when she got a subpoena in July 2005 from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office regarding Kleeh's case.

"She got a subpoena in the mail, didn't know what it was about, and called the D.A.," Gilmartin said. "They told her they wanted her to testify because (her son) was a victim in a child-abuse case. She had no idea."

One of the lawsuits alleges that the boy and his classmates were subjected to abuse, including "closed fist punches to his head, poking of his chest with a stick, beatings on body with a pipe, pushing and holding (him) down ... to his desk, and verbal degradation and abuse."

According to police documents, school officials did not report any of the incidents to local authorities as required by state law, the lawsuit said.

The criminal case was filed after authorities were contacted by witnesses, the lawsuit said.

District officials said a substitute teacher and a substitute aide had witnessed an incident involving the boy and reported it to the principal, and authorities were contacted. The parents, however, were not notified, officials said.

The sheriff's investigator on the case declined to comment, and the prosecutor did not respond to comment requests.

Kleeh has pleaded not guilty to the charges. She had pleaded no contest to the two misdemeanor charges in August 2005, but then was allowed to withdraw her plea in November 2005, court officials said.

She was scheduled to appear in court to set a trial date later this month, officials said. Her attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

Palmdale interim Superintendent Roger Gallizzi said Kleeh had been employed by Los Angeles County when the county ran Antelope Valley's special-education programs.

Kleeh became a district staffer when Palmdale and other Antelope Valley school districts took over operation of the programs beginning in 2000.

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