Autistic teenager sexually assaulted by a fellow resident of Bancroft NeuroHealth
September 1, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
A developmentally disabled 18-year-old, Benny Ward, has been charged with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old with autism. As reported in today’s Star-Ledger (NJ), Ward entered the room of another resident of Bancroft NeuroHealth in Haddonfield on June 11 and sexually assualted the autistic resident, who is non-verbal. The suspect and the alleged victim had different rooms that shared a common hallway. As noted in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:
About 11:30 p.m., the 17-year-old left his room to approach Bancroft staff. A nurse spotted a deep scratch, several inches long, on the boy’s back, [Bill] Shralow [spokeman for the Camden County prosecutor] said.
Staff members escorted the boy back to his room, where they found additional signs of an assault. A Bancroft supervisor called Haddonfield police “right away,” Shralow said.
An incident involving sexual assault by one resident of Bancroft NeuroHealth on another happened in 2004. The mother of an autistic boy who died at the facility in 2002 then sued the center.
Sad and terrible.
I’ll bet that the investigation – as done by police without any reasonable training in how to work with autistics (and other developmentally disabled/handicapped) – was as much use as tits on a fish.
The police routinely manage to show that they suck at that sort of investigative issue.
Bancroft NeuroHealth has been in the news for other violations a number of times—-as soon as I read the headline for this story, I knew it had happened there.
Bancroft is in my opinion, is a house of horrors. I advocate for families who have had their child die at this facility, families who have yanked their children out of this facility becuase of the abuse, families who’s child have been thrown out of this facility, and families who still have their loved one there, who are scared to advocate for their child because of fear of retaliation. To boot, the monitors report as of November 15, 2006, state “Monitor Cites Improvements. Bancroft is blaming families for being abusive and hostile!!!!