A therapist in the south-central United States accused of throwing a seven-year-old non-verbal autistic child against a wall has been arrested.
Ashley Moreno, an employee at a North Texas behavioural health centre under investigation for child abuse, was taken into custody by police on Thursday.
Police on Wednesday arrested Kiara Henry, 34, the owner of ABA Interactive Behavioural Therapy, on charges of failure to report.
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CBS News Texas confirmed the facility is not only under police investigation but also at the centre of a lawsuit by that autistic boy’s family. The family claims the facility was supposed to be a place of learning, but instead became a place of fear.
According to the lawsuit, one of those students came home with a visible scratch mark on his face back on June 20. The lawsuit says the behavioural center told the family their non-verbal autistic child inflicted the scratch on himself.
The boy’s parents claim ABA’s owner would not let them see the video of the incident because it was against the facility’s policy.
The lawsuit goes on to say, the parents were able to watch a copy of the video, which was leaked to them by another employee. The video shows a therapist “picking up the child by his collar.
The video then shows the therapist pushing the boy into a corner, stepping on another autistic child in the process, and throwing the boy against a wall with her hands around his neck.
The family’s lawyer, Wesley Gould, said police now have evidence of the therapist abusing other children.
“The fact that it happened was disgusting, but on top of that the fact that this establishment covered it up, after knowing what it happened and brushed under the rug, and the police department found other cases where this therapist harmed other children and she never reported it.
“It’s a wholesale of just level of bad acting and anybody that goes to that facility,” Gould said.
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