Special ed teacher out on bond

A Schaumburg junior high teacher arrested on charges he mistreated students has posted $50,000 to get out of jail, according to information from the Cook County jail.

Bond was set at $500,000 Friday for Patrick McCarthy, 30, who is charged with three counts of aggravated battery and one count of unlawful restraint stemming from alleged incidents with three autistic students this fall.

He had to pay 10 percent of that sum to be released. Under special conditions of his bond, he is barred from contact with anyone under 18 and cannot go to Robert Frost Junior High, where he has taught for three years.

No one answered a phone call to McCarthy's Palatine home Saturday afternoon.

Prosecutors allege that McCarthy, on separate occasions, tied one student to a chair with a jump rope, forced a student to jump on a trampoline for 40 minutes in a weighted vest and pushed one autistic boy face-first into a metal cabinet.

The three alleged victims are boys. One cannot speak.

McCarthy, who authorities say is one semester shy of a master's degree in special education, supervises about a half-dozen autistic children. The school has never had complaints about him before, officials said, and he has no prior criminal background.

Teachers aides in his classroom this year told police they'd noticed him becoming increasingly agitated and impatient, prosecutors said.

They took their concerns to administrators, who removed him from class and placed him on administrative leave.

Officials with Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 now are conducting their own investigation.

And though McCarthy is out of jail, "he's still not coming back to the classroom, at least until we finish our investigation," district spokeswoman Terri McHugh said.

McCarthy is scheduled to be in court again Oct. 19.