NYC school bus pedophile finally convicted

In March 2007, Rodolfo Hernandez,(a spic male's name, surprised?) a 52-year-old school bus driver, was transporting a three-year-old Staten Island girl with special needs back home after a day at Little Lamb Preschool. Mr. Hernandez told the matron on the bus to go home. He could take it from here. The matron got off the bus, leaving Carmen alone with the man who would be convicted of sexually molesting her two years later.

The child had a speech delay, and prosecutors said that Mr. Hernandez relied upon her disability to sexually abuse her and get away with it. And that is almost what happened.

While Carmen was able to convey the sex abuse to her parents through gestures and single words, the child could not tell detectives or child psychologists what had happened that day on the bus. The matron denied ever having left the bus, because she knew she would get fired if she told the truth. With no evidence and no witnesses except a special needs three-year-old, police released Mr. Hernandez without charging him. But they did retrieve, a day later, the little girl’s underwear from the family hamper and sent it off for DNA testing.

For the next year, Mr. Hernandez, who had twice been convicted of DUI, drove a school bus full of special-needs children every day.

In March 2008, when the DNA testing came back from the lab and the pedophile’s saliva was found inside poor Carmen’s underwear, Mr. Hernandez was charged and jailed while awaiting trial. Another interview with the bus matron revealed that she lied to detectives about being on the bus when the toddler said she had been abused.

The trial began a full year after the arrest, and yesterday Mr. Hernandez was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor. He faces a sentence of two to seven years on March 30.

It took two full years, but the parents of Carmen finally got the pedophile off the streets and out of the school buses of special needs children. Who knows how many children he molested before he got caught? That is the unsettling question for parents of special needs children everywhere.

The Department of Education needs more oversight of their school bus personnel. Right now, they contract out bus service to the lowest bidders, and special education children find themselves spending up to three hours a day with drivers and matrons who have no training in special needs nor any desire to help special needs children. They are simply people getting paid minimum wage to do a job that no one else wants. It is not surprising that many of them end up taking advantage of their young charges.

We hear of many stories that run the gamut from terrifyingly dangerous to incredibly insensitive. My special needs daughter spent an entire year with a matron who didn’t know how to strap a child in a car seat. I heard a story where a child had an “accident” on the bus and the matron made the mother board the bus with a mop and pail and clean it up. Matrons are supposed to be the female guardians of these buses, but many buses run without them or with ones who are present but ambivalent.

Drivers and matrons of special education buses need more vetting, training and oversight. How many special needs children need to be harmed before Chancellor Klein makes good on his slogan Children First?

Another reason to think Latinos are animals.

Swine flu and extermination of spics is a blessing for humanity....