Therapist threw autistic 7-year-old against wall at North Texas center, lawsuit alleges
A behavioral therapy center for children with autism faces a lawsuit by parents who say their child was physically abused at the center, according to the complaint filed Monday in a Tarrant County district court.
An employee of ABA Interactive threw the non-verbal autistic child against a wall in June, in an attack that was captured on video, according to the suit.
North Richland Hills police said in a news release Tuesday that they are investigating what happened and are ready to charge at least one person. Police heard from the 7-year-old boy’s mother that he was assaulted by a therapist at ABA Interactive, and a warrant has been issued on second-degree felony charges of injury to a child, police said.
Police have not released the name of the person who faces criminal charges.
ABA Interactive did not respond to a request for comment from the Star-Telegram.
The parents learned about the child’s injury when the father went to pick his son up from ABA Interactive, according to the suit. But while video evidence would later show that the child was thrown against a wall, the lawsuit says the father was initially told his son had inflicted injuries on himself during a “behavioral episode.”
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The father couldn’t get any information on what triggered the alleged episode but was asked by the center to sign an incident report that said the boy hurt himself, according to the suit. When he got home, though, he and his wife had a conversation where they both recalled that their son had never been violent toward himself or others.
Later on, the mother contacted ABA Interactive and asked to see video of what happened, according to the suit. She said she wanted to know what to look out for in the future in case her son tried to harm himself again. An employee said she would have to review the video herself to see if the parents could see it, citing HIPAA concerns.
The mother was eventually told she couldn’t review the video because other children were in it and another parent didn’t want the video released, according to the suit. That same employee later showed up at the family’s home with a licensed therapist on the phone and told the boy’s parents that their son had a behavioral episode and hit an employee.
She told the parents the employee “gently restrained” the boy and another employee came to help control him, and that in the video the camera couldn’t see what happened when the boy hurt himself, according to the complaint. The family wanted to know why those details weren’t in the incident report the father signed and why the center couldn’t tell the parents how the boy got hurt.
Two therapists ended up contacting the family on separate occasions, with one saying that nobody was being allowed to see the video and another saying they’d obtained a copy of the video, according to the complaint. When the parents finally saw the video, they saw the boy pat a therapist on the leg. The action wasn’t aggressive and was just meant to get attention, according to the suit.
The video then showed the second therapist mentioned by ABA Interactive rush toward the boy, pick up him as he was flailing, push him into a corner while stepping on another child with autism, and then throw the boy into the wall, according to the suit. That employee was not fired but reassigned to home therapy, the suit states.
The parents accused the center of negligence and are demanding a jury trial, seeking over $1 million in damages.
