A father filed a lawsuit against a child care home that specializes in children with disabilities due to alleged physical abuse of his autistic child that left the boy in intensive care.
According to the child’s father, the incident occurred in Serenity Home and was reported nine months earlier to the Garden Grove Police Department. However, to date, he has no answers of what might have happened to his son.
David, 14, suffers from severe autism, and last May, when the boy got on the bus, the driver noticed that the child was hurt and took the child to the emergency room.
The boy’s father, Gordon Franklin Peery Jr., said his child was unrecognizable and the doctors even thought his skull was broken.
Peery said that he left his son in the child care home because the house had a state license to house disabled children. He also added that the house staff told him that the child was easily marked with bruises when he asked about earlier injuries. But the third time, David showed bruises in his eyes and could not even open them, along with having the white part of his eye turned red.
The injuries were so severe that David had to stay in intensive care for five days.
Lounne Masry, the attorney representing Peery and his son, said the Department of Social Services oversees this type of business, and by federal and state law, facilities are required to report any suspected physical abuse or incidents that require medical treatment. The attorney says that nothing was reported to the required channels for over a year and a half.
The lawsuit filed this week is against Serenity Home and its administrator Henry Balanza. Balanza did not comment on the lawsuit or on the injuries in David’s case.
For now, the business in Garden Grove continues to operate. Meanwhile, Peery continues to have many questions and few answers about her son’s case. Unfortunately, David cannot communicate what happened.
