Prosecutors investigating group home accused in lawsuit of abusing Queens autistic man
The Suffolk County district attorney's office confirmed Thursday, one day after the nonverbal autistic man's mother filed a federal lawsuit, that it has an 'open investigation' into allegations of abuse at the Life's WORC group home in East Islip.
The Daily News was first to report about the lawsuit, which was filed in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday. It alleges that group home staff subjected a now 26-year-old resident, J.P., to two years of physical abuse, mistreatment and overmedication — even after video of one staffer kicking J.P. made television news in 2023.
Tania Lopez, a spokeswoman for Suffolk DA Raymond Tierney, said Thursday that the investigation predates the lawsuit.
Representatives of Life's WORC did not return messages seeking comment Thursday.
According to the lawsuit, which cites three named whistleblowers, staff repeatedly punched and kicked J.P. and invented incidents in which he'd hit himself in the head so they could keep him in a drugged, 'zombie-like' state.
Staff would tie his shirt sleeves to restrain him like he was wearing a straitjacket, gripped him so tightly he bruised, and didn't keep him properly dressed and groomed, the suit alleges, and in one instance doctors found a metal object in his colon after he was hospitalized in February 2024.
The suit also alleges that administrators forced staff to delete a video from February 2023 showing one of the group home's autism support professionals, Bryan Amegah, kicking J.P. in the torso. The video got out anyway, and was aired in a News 12 Long Island story that June.
'We welcome the Suffolk County district attorney's investigation into Life's WORC,' said J.P.'s lawyer, Ilann Maazel of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. 'This case involves the systemic abuse, neglect and overmedication of one of the most vulnerable members of our community. We stand ready to cooperate fully if the DA seeks to hold individuals accountable — because justice for J.P. is essential to ensuring this never happens to anyone else.'
In 2019, another staffer at the group home, Richard Garnett, forced one resident there to walk naked on a treadmill until he fell and fractured his neck, according to a now-settled lawsuit. Garnett was charged, and pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of an incompetent person and was sentenced to three years' probation, Lopez said.
'I want justice and accountability,' J.P.'s mother, who goes by her initials, V.T., to protect her son's identity, told The News. 'My son is a human being. No one should be treated that way, or spoken to [that way]. No one should raise their hand to anyone. He's a disabled man.'
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