NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, Texas — The parents of a child diagnosed with non-verbal autism have filed a civil suit against a North Texas behavioral center, accusing the staff there of covering up and lying about a physical assault against him.
Now, police have filed charges. The owner and director of the center, Kiara Henry, has been arrested and charged with failure to report, a state jail felony. And an employee at the center, Ashley Moreno, is wanted for the charge of injury to a child.
According to the lawsuit, the parents, Ramila Chalise and Prabesh Poudel, enrolled their 7-year-old child, named in the suit by his initials "Y.P.", into an applied behavioral analysis (ABA) center near their home, ABA Interactive in North Richland Hills.
Initially, the suit says the parents had no concerns with the facility and trusted its method, but that all changed on June 20.
On that day, Poudel went to pick up his son from the center after work, and when he got there, Henry said there was an incident report he needed to sign. An alleged copy of the report included in the suit states that Y.P. had begun to have a tantrum and scratched the right side of his face.
When Poudel asked what caused the episode, he was told by an employee that she wasn't there and had no more info than what was in the report, the suit states. Both parents had concerns as Y.P. had never self-harmed before, and no one from the center had called either of them to tell them what happened.
After Chalise had asked to see video footage of the incident, Henry said she couldn't show it to her because other children were in the video and a parent of another child in the room objected to showing the video, the suit detailed.
Henry came to the parents home on another night, the suit stated, where she added additional context, that Y.P. reportedly began hitting one of the staff members, and then when he wouldn't calm down, another staff member "gently picked Y.P. up by his collar and helped to restrain him," and that at some point both had their backs turned to the camera, which is when Y.P. reportedly scratched himself.
Chalise was reportedly shocked that Henry had waited until now to reveal this, the suit stated, and asked why the incident report failed to mention this, and how they could sign off on a report when they couldn't confirm how he received the scratch.
Henry reportedly told them the employee who had picked Y.P. up by his collar was suspended from providing care at the center and now only provided care from an in-home setting, the suit stated.
The parents were later contacted by another therapist at the center, the suit states, who claimed Henry was keeping the video hidden and that he believed something wasn't right. Days later, another therapist told them they had gotten a copy of the video and showed it to them.
That video reportedly didn't track at all with the story told by Henry, the suit states. In the video, Y.P. was reportedly patting the employee on the lap with his hands, but in an attention-seeking way rather than an aggressive way. The other staff member can reportedly be seen picking Y.P. up by his collar and pushing him into a corner, stepping on another child on the way, and throwing Y.P. against a wall with her hands around his neck, the suit details.
Chalise and Poudel then went straight to the police, the suit states. The North Richland Hills Police Department confirmed they are investigating the incident and have issued an arrest warrant for a suspect on charges of injury to a child. But the suspect hasn't been arrested as of Tuesday afternoon.
The suit accuses ABA Interactive of vicarious liability; negligence; negligent hiring, training, supervision and retention; and gross negligence. And the parents are seeking putative damage due to the reported physical pain and suffering and mental anguish suffered by Y.P.
WFAA has reached out to ABA Interactive for comment but has not heard back as of Tuesday afternoon.
