A girl reported my son for assaulting her in school. She claimed that her neck was still hurting her the night after the "assault." Now, my son is autistic and at the time had an aide that followed him around everywhere. Even setting aside the fact that my son isn't violent (he's more likely to break down into tears than actually fight), why didn't his aide see this assault?
Upon looking into the matter we had our answer. The normal aide was out for the day and the substitute aide left our son to get his lunch in the cafeteria while he (the aide) got his own lunch. Now, our son's IEP specifically stated that he was not to be left alone in the cafeteria. The noise and chaos wreck havoc with him. So the aide leaving him alone in that situation was a breach of his IEP which could mean we could initiate legal action if we wanted.
Furthermore, our son claimed that he saw the girl, walked up to her and tapped her in the shoulder to get her attention in order to say hi. This was corroborated by security camera recordings.
We were told that technically our son broke school rules with the shoulder tap. We countered that they were free to punish him for a shoulder tap but then we'd go after the school for violating his IEP that put him in the situation to begin with. In the end, he was simply reminded not to touch other people even if he thought it was a friendly manner.
Meanwhile, I don't think the girl was punished at all even though she had been going around school telling people that our son assaulted her. (Including telling her sister who was mildly friendly with my son, trying to break that up.) She was brought in for a meeting where she reiterated that she was assaulted and her neck still hurt. Then she was shown the shoulder tap video. At most, she might have gotten a warning, but that was it.