These are the concerns Nemours had raised months before arrest of Brandywine school therapist

Months before a Brandywine School District therapist was arrested on charges of raping a child, a parent and employees at Nemours Children's Hospital raised concerns to district officials about the man, according to interviews and documents obtained by Delaware Online/The News Journal.

The issues centered on John Arnold's qualifications – which were recently determined to have been fabricated – his treatment of a 6-year-old child in his program who was under Nemours’ care, his history of practicing psychology without a license and his behavior toward hospital staff. The concerns were first raised in April and reiterated in early May.

The May allegations, documented in an email to Brandywine officials, included claims of “repeated impersonation” of a licensed psychologist and “misrepresentation” of his training and credentials. Delaware Online/The News Journal received confirmation this week that Arnold never received at least two educational degrees he purported to have, including a Ph.D.

Following the May allegations raised by Nemours, district officials promised they would “conduct a full investigation” and elevated the concerns to at least one of the district’s chief administrators, emails show.

At the time, however, the district did not request additional information from Nemours, and Arnold continued working with school children until his arrest earlier this month.

Brandywine School District only confirmed, following questions by a Delaware Online/News Journal reporter, that “suspicions regarding Mr. Arnold’s credentials had been previously shared with the district.”

BACKGROUND: Del. school employee charged with rape faced other sexual misconduct claims: court records

“As a result, the district has retained an external third-party to fully investigate this matter and our response,” the statement said. The district’s responses were published on social media at the same time the email reply was sent to Delaware Online/The News Journal.

This newspaper has not been able to get in contact with Arnold as he is being held prison for the rape charges.

In the wake of recent revelations, parents have been left with dozens of questions – including why the district didn’t dig deeper into the concerns about Arnold and how their children were allowed to receive care that they feel was sub-par.

‘Is he really a doctor?’

Arnold’s interaction with Nemours staff began prior to this spring, but the complaints to Lombardy Elementary School officials and district administrators didn’t begin until a 6-year-old boy joined Arnold’s emotional support program in late winter.

Arnold had worked at Lombardy since at least the fall of 2022, records show. He was first hired by the district in 2021 with a start date of Oct. 18, a publicly-available district personnel report shows.

The boy, whose mother and grandmother spoke with Delaware Online/The News Journal for this story, had been moved from Harlan Elementary to Arnold’s program at Lombardy in early 2024 after developing behavioral problems at Harlan. The issues with Arnold began soon after the transfer, according to his family.

Delaware Online/The News Journal is not identifying the child or his family members because they fear retaliation by the district, where the boy is still a student. They also want to protect his identity, given Nemours diagnosed him with autism earlier this year.

According to the child’s family and emails between Nemours and district officials, Arnold quickly identified himself as an “autism specialist” despite having no official training that neither Nemours nor Delaware Online/The News Journal could find.

Arnold also repeatedly claimed he was a licensed psychologist, which was untrue. According to a search of Florida, Maryland and Delaware records, the only official license he ever received was in Florida in 2015, where he was given a provisional license to practice psychology.

That expired in 2017, however, Arnold continued to practice and purport himself to be a licensed therapist, according to a lawsuit filed in May of 2021. Nemours staff had learned about the suit and offered to share their findings with the district, according to a May email exchanged with Brandywine officials.

The district did not follow up on that information until this week, emails show.

Soon after the boy joined Arnold’s program, Arnold began questioning Nemours’ autism diagnosis, telling the child’s family that the boy might instead have a mood disorder, such as bipolar disorder. (Psychologists say it’s extremely rare for kindergarteners to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder).

Yet even after speaking with Nemours staff directly, emails show Arnold continued questioning the hospital’s diagnosis.

One Monday in early April, he sent the child’s mother a text message with a leaflet titled “misdiagnosis Monday,” according to text messages reviewed by Delaware Online/The News Journal.

In it, a Venn Diagram showed overlap between symptoms of ADHD and autism. The boy’s mother said Arnold’s questioning of Nemours’ diagnosis – especially without having any apparent training in autism – confused and upset her.

She and the boy’s grandmother said they raised these concerns to school staff during an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting. But the district, they said, was “adamant that he was this great person.”

“It was always, ‘Well, he’s a (Ph.D.), he’s Dr. John,’” the child’s mother said. “But Nemours was like, ‘Is he really a doctor? Is he licensed to be addressed as a doctor? Is he licensed to be giving this advice to parents about diagnoses?’”

This week, Brandywine blamed the Delaware Department of Education for not verifying Arnold’s purported educational degrees and other credentials.

"The district utilized the DDOE’s acceptance and approval of what we now know to be falsified credentials submitted by Mr. Arnold directly to the state in order to confirm his educational status at the time of his hiring,” a statement said.

‘That’s grooming’

The problems with Arnold only continued as the weeks wore on, prompting Nemours to reach out to Lombardy staff – including the principal – in early April.

During a phone call that month, Nemours raised concerns about Arnold’s treatment of hospital staff. An email sent after the call said that Arnold had been “confrontational and unprofessional.”

In an emailed reply, Lombardy Principal Michael McDermott said he spoke to Arnold about his contact with Nemours staff and instructed the educator not to reach out to Nemours personally. McDermott also requested the names of parents who reported having negative interactions with Arnold.

Several days later, McDermott and Lombardy’s assistant principal met with Nemours staff via Zoom. In that meeting, Nemours raised concerns about Arnold’s behavior toward staff as well as his lack of autism training, according to those with direct knowledge of the conversation.

Nemours also discussed what they called Arnold’s “misunderstanding” of how Black children present with autism and told Lombardy staff they had unease about his understanding and treatment of minorities.

According to those involved in the meeting, in response, the school shared examples of Arnold paying for students’ groceries or providing transportation to Black or brown families. Nemours staff replied with concern, saying the behavior was inappropriate and an educator should not have that kind of outside contact with school families.

They notified the district that they would be making complaints to the Delaware Board of Psychology.

When asked this week about this kind of behavior, Patricia Dailey Lewis, executive director of the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children, agreed.

“That's grooming,” she said.

Concerns about Arnold’s treatment of students did not end there, however.

In one video that Arnold sent to the boy’s mom, the child is seen having a tantrum in what Arnold called a “quiet” or “calm-down room” for students who are acting out.

Yet the room doesn’t appear to meet standards for a “quiet” room, the child’s grandmother said. She works in another Delaware school district and said their “calm down” rooms are carpeted with mats on the floor. The walls are also painted.

The room that Arnold took the child to on multiple occasions, photos and videos show, has none of that.

It’s a white, cinderblock room with a laminate floor. The space, perhaps no larger than 8 feet by 8 feet, also appears dirty.

“It looks like a prison cell,” Dailey Lewis said when shown a video of the closest-sized space.

The child’s mother said the video she received of her son in the room, screaming and crying, was heartbreaking. Arnold also wasn’t providing any help, the video shows. Instead, he simply stood there and filmed.

“It made me cry,” the mother said. “Like oh my God, look at the conditions of the room the way he seems to be in so much distress but is not getting the help that he needs.”

She added that she felt dismissed when she questioned school officials about the room.

“When we met for the IEP, the district was like, ‘Well this, this room meets the standards,’” she said.

She also shared text messages that showed Arnold asking if he could call Delaware’s Mobile Crisis Intervention Services – typically contacted when people are undergoing psychiatric emergencies – for a tantrum her small, lanky 6-year-old son was throwing.

At the time, she did not authorize Arnold to call Mobile Crisis and the boy was not treated by them. But she said that kind of response was “really upsetting for me” – and showed just how unqualified Arnold was to interact with her son.

After Delaware Online/The News Journal sent a photo and video of the “quiet” room and questioned Arnold’s practices, Brandywine said it was “investigating reports related to questionable and unsanctioned practices, alleged to have been used by Mr. Arnold, that would not align with our policies.”

‘A failure on multiple levels’

Brandywine School District reiterated on Friday that none of the latest allegations to surface against Arnold were sexual in nature. He was accused of repeatedly raping a 5-year-old girl, beginning in at least November 2022. He was arrested earlier this month.

The child was not a student of his, police said. The district stressed Friday that police do not have any evidence to suggest Arnold sexually abused his students.

But the mother said she believes her son was harmed nonetheless by Arnold’s treatment and the district’s inactions.

By not looking into her and Nemours’ concerns – including the issues Nemours raised of Arnold’s impersonation of a licensed psychologist and history of practicing without a license – her son did not receive the care he needed.

Months of potential care were wasted, she said. She wonders if he would still be acting out if he’d gotten the correct early intervention.

Instead, she said, he was suspended or put in a “quiet room” for his behavioral issues.

“I was blindsided by the transition from Harlan to Lombardy, but I was like, ‘OK, maybe this program will be good and it might be able to teach him emotional regulation techniques,’” the mother said. “‘Then maybe he'll be able to be reintegrated back into the normal schools.’”

All her son got, however, was red marks on his educational file. At 6 years old and having just finished kindergarten, she worries what this means for the rest of his schooling.

“I'm between a rock and a hard place because I don’t want him in (Brandywine schools), but his record is probably tainted so getting him into another school is probably going to be extremely difficult,” she said.

“Now I have to send him back into this environment where I don’t believe that they're invested in keeping him safe or making sure that the professionals around him are trained and have the credentials to be providing the interventions and services that this program offers,” she said.

Delaware Senate Education Committee member Sen. Brian Pettyjohn, a Georgetown Republican, called the district’s actions in this case – as well the Delaware Department of Education’s failure to verify Arnold’s educational degrees – a “failure.”

“There was a failure on multiple levels by multiple independent authorities,” Pettyjohn told Delaware Online/The News Journal Friday morning. “The systems that are in place to make sure that individuals who claim certain credentials, certain certifications, are broken somewhere.”

The senator added that now that it’s clear the “process is broken,” the district and Department of Education must take steps to fix the system.

He suggested that districts “dedicate some resources” to audit educators’ qualifications, starting with the “most sensitive positions” – or those who work with children with additional needs. Then, schools should focus on auditing everyone else.

Pettyjohn also called it “concerning” that the district did not dig deeper into the parent or Nemours’ concerns, especially in light of the district promising a “full investigation.”

Emails show that one of the officials notified of the concerns was Nicole Warner, the district’s Director of Educational Services. A senior administrator, she works closely with the superintendent and deputies.

Pettyjohn said that once the officials were made aware of concerns – “whether it’s Nemours, whether it’s Beebe, whether it’s a private practitioner somewhere” – “those flags should be tended to immediately.”

“Obviously there was a breakdown somewhere,” Pettyjohn said. “It's really disappointing to hear that after those warnings, the school district didn't do anything.”

Got a story tip or idea? Send to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com. For all things breaking news, follow her on X at @izzihughes_

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Prior to arrest of Del. school therapist, Nemours had raised concerns