Audit finds systemic failures at Geneva autism school

The school at Mancy, Collonges-Bellerive, in canton Geneva. © Keystone / Martial Trezzini

Various cases of mistreatment at a Geneva school for young people with autism were the result of systemic failures in how the institution was set up, an external audit has found.

The school at Mancy just outside Geneva, which opened in 2018, has been in the Swiss press over the past weeks after local media reported on various cases of mistreatment and physical neglect.

According to the report now published on Thursday by two external experts, systemic problems in the school’s functioning were at fault from the beginning: staff were not properly qualified to care for children with autism, there was a high employee turnover rate, and there was a lack of clearly planned daily activities and structures for the students – something particularly important for those with autism.

The assessment also found that the director of the school had no experience managing such an institution; however, the overall problems were not the result of a single person’s mistakes but rather an “accumulation of failures”, it said.

The experts recommend that the school – which remains open – be restructured and divided into smaller parts and taken over by a subsidised private management structure.

The Mancy institution offers places for some 10 youths between the ages of eight and 18, suffering from autism or other intellectual disabilities.

Media investigation

Staff at the home are accused of having given one resident unprescribed medication that endangered her health and possibly even her life, as well as throwing children on the ground, leaving them in their own excrement, and dragging them from room to room.

As a result of the allegations, which were publicly reportedExternal link by local media outlets Le Temps and Heidi News in January, an inquiry was opened by the Geneva public prosecutor, and three members of staff were brought in by police for questioning.

The affair has also had political repercussions for the Geneva minister in charge of education and youth, Anne Emery-Torracinta, whom the media claim was slow to have reacted to information that there were problems in the institution.