Following the filing of a civil lawsuit against a behavioral center in North Texas, a director has been arrested, and police are searching for an employee wanted in connection with the alleged assault of a nonverbal child with autism.
The North Richland Hills Police Department announced on Wednesday that 34-year-old Kiara Henry, the director and owner of ABA Interactive Therapy Center, was taken into custody and charged with failure to report, a state jail felony.
Tarrant County Jail
Police also issued an arrest warrant on July 24 for 31-year-old Ashley Moreno, who is wanted for injury to a child, which is a second-degree felony.
According to the police department, two parents called them on Thursday, June 27, about an alleged assault on a 7-year-old boy that happened a week before at ABA Interactive Therapy Center.
The child’s parents, Prabesh Poudel and Ramila Chalise, informed authorities that their son, a patient at the facility, had been viciously assaulted by a therapist.
In North Richland Hills police’s new release and the civil suit, it was stated that one of the parents went to pick up the child from the center on June 20, and when they arrived, the parent discovered a large scratch on the child’s face.
The parent was then asked to sign an incident report, which wrote that the child “engaged in maladaptive behavior where he began to have a tantrum and scratched the right side of his face,” the lawsuit claimed.
Sharing deep concern about their son’s recent self-harm, as it was unprecedented, and their disappointment in the center’s failure to inform them when the incident happened, Poudel and Chalise sought to learn more details.
The lawsuit said after not getting any concrete answers from Henry, the parents were contacted by an employee at the center who claimed Henry was hiding the video.
A few days later, another employee obtained a copy of the video and showed it to the parents. The video allegedly showed Moreno, a therapist, grabbing the autistic child by his shirt and shoving him against a wall with her hands around his neck.
After further investigation, North Richland Hills police said they learned there were multiple unreported complaints against Moreno. Police are encouraging anyone with additional information about the incident to call them at 817-427-7030.
Chalise and Poudel are seeking punitive damages due to the reported physical pain, suffering, and mental anguish suffered by their son, and suing the therapy center for vicarious liability, negligence, negligent hiring, training, supervision, retention, and gross negligence.
NBC 5 contacted ABA Interactive for a statement regarding the incident and lawsuit, but as of Wednesday, we have not received a response.
