This hurts me so much to hear about it. I was a counselor in Camp HASC three plus decades ago, and my bunk consisted of a couple of girls with Down Syndrome, and a couple who suffered brain damage at birth and a variety of other birth defects. They were sweet, young women. Every morning we had to get the girls out of bed and go straight to morning exercises for ten minutes, to warm up and get the blood going. Of course many of the girls were less coordinated than one would hope for, but so what? Anyway, one of the other counselors offhandedly made the incredibly rude and hurtful remark within hearing of my girls, “Why do we even bother wasting our time doing this every day? It’s not gonna HELP them! The’re retarded, for G-d’s sake!”
I took this counselor aside, and very quietly told her that if she ever made a remark like that again she would answer to me and she had no business working at HASC with that attitude. I further told her that although these girls were developmentally slower, not a single one of them would EVER think to hurt someone else’s feelings as she did, and that she could learn a lot from them on how to be a mensch.
Needless to say, she shut up, broigez, and we were not particularly friendly for the balance of the summer, but she never made such a remark again, at least not in my hearing range.
What really brought this experience home to me was when my camper with Downs was crying in the bunk and when I asked her why, she said, “Why did So and So say something so mean to us? She hurt my feelings. I AM NOT retarded. And I like to do jumping jacks!”
I am especially sensitive when I see this type of mean-spiritedness as you described, and it really saddens me when I see young people treat another young person who is slightly different, in that way. My son who works with special needs children, would teach them the score, all right.