Lawsuit Alleges ‘Systematic’ Abuse at Youth Treatment Facility Run by Man Commuted by Former President Trump

The alleged wrongdoers have not yet responded to the claims

The boy was no more than 12 years old, when around 1995, his licensed therapeutic counselor at The Lord’s Ranch, a residential psychiatric treatment facility in rural Arkansas, asked him if he wanted to drive his car.

The boy said “yes.”

But once the boy was in the driver’s seat, the counselor “began to grab his thighs and grope him,” a 55-page civil complaint filed in the Northern Division of the Eastern District of Arkansas’s federal court and obtained by PEOPLE claims.

At his counselor’s touch, the boy hit the brakes.

That’s when, the suit alleges, the counselor took the boy’s shoulder and said he would take care of him. That he would buy him things. That he would let his mother come visit.

The boy told his counselor he did not want to be touched, according to the lawsuit.

But the counselor performed oral sex on the child anyway, according to the lawsuit, then forced the crying child to perform oral sex on him.

“You won’t make it out of the Ranch alive,” the suit alleges the counselor said to the boy if he told anyone about the abuse, adding: “I run everything here” and “no one is going to believe you.”

But the boy reported what happened that same day, according to the suit. The following day, several program officials “listened and then did nothing to help” the child, according to the suit. After nothing happened to the counselor, he allegedly smirked at the boy and said: “I told you, I told you,” the suit claims.

The counselor, named as a defendant in the lawsuit along with the facility and its owners, has not been criminally charged and has not responded to the Nov. 6 court filing as of Monday morning. The facility closed in 2016

The suit alleges that one of the facility officials who the boy told about the abuse was Ted Suhl, who helped run the Medicaid-funded facility, which took in children from several states’ Department of Children and Family Services across the country.

In 2016, Suhl was convicted of bribing an Arkansas state official after prosecutors argued he had funneled extra Medicaid payments to the treatment facility for his own monetary gain. Suhl was found guilty of 4 of 6 charges in the bribery and fraud case and was sentenced to 7 years in prison — a sentence later commuted by then-President Donald J. Trump in 2019.

The new federal suit, which names Suhl and the counselor, Emmett A. Presley — along with 31 additional defendants — alleges that the facility in the remote hilltown of Warm Springs, Ark., was a place where children ages 10 to 17 years old were “regularly abused physically, psychologically and sexually” and that facility leaders “preyed on and abused the children” at the facility “routinely and systematically.” 

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Martin Gould, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, tells PEOPLE of the suit filed last week.

Gould and lawyer Josh Gillispie, who represent the eight now-adult John Doe plaintiffs in the current suit, expect to file additional suits in the coming months, they tell PEOPLE.

The lawyers must file any additional suits by the end of January, in accordance with Arkansas’s Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sexual Abuse Act, which allows civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse to be filed years after the alleged abuse occurred and long after the civil statute of limitations would otherwise bar them, Gillispie tells PEOPLE.

The current suit alleges “systematic and widespread abuse” at the facility including “premeditated sexual abuse and child rape, often under threat of force,” included but not limited to the use of “isolation closets and straitjackets.”

The suit further alleges that Presley was “grooming” the kids under his care and that together with Suhl and the deputy administrator, Alonza Jiles (also listed as a defendant in the suit), they “engaged in the transportation of minors for prohibited sexual conduct.”

The facility also allegedly routinely made “concerted efforts to cover-up and conceal allegations of abuse,” according to the suit.

There are no criminal filings related to allegations of sexual abuse against any of the people named in the suit, according to Gillispie.

Suhl’s defense lawyer, Michael J. Scotti III, tells PEOPLE he is unaware of any criminal sexual abuse charges ever being filed in connection to The Lord’s Ranch. The Randolph County Circuit Court clerk did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for additional confirmation.

Scotti, who represents both Suhl and his mother, Shirley Suhl, a co-founder of the ranch who is also named in the lawsuit, called the allegations of sexual abuse “highly suspect.”

“I’m not aware of a single record of sexual abuse ever,” says Scotti, who said he had represented The Lord’s Ranch for many years, adding that the ranch was “very well respected and regulated for decades with zero complaints of sexual abuse, much less any incident that were reported and followed up on.”

Scotti said that further allegations of “people concealing it and transporting people for the purposes of sexual abuse,” was “pure fiction made up to get out of motions to dismiss and not based on actual facts.”

Scotti acknowledged that there had been reports of physical restraints used at the property.

Gould tells PEOPLE he believes that it was due to Suhl’s alleged “political connections” that the abuse continued at the facility unchecked for decades.

In a published statement explaining why he commuted Suhl’s bribery sentence in 2019, Trump said that “leaders in Mr. Suhl’s home State of Arkansas,” had “strongly encouraged” the reduced sentence and that Suhl’s request for clemency was “strongly supported” by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former United States Attorney Bud Cummins of the Eastern District of Arkansas, “each of whom have devoted considerable time and effort to securing his release.”

Trump also noted in his statement that f​​ederal prosecutors in Arkansas had previously “declined to pursue” the bribery case, “but prosecutors in Washington decided to move forward with the prosecution.”

According to the new suit, The Lord’s Ranch had advertised itself on its now-deleted website as “in every sense of the word, a home,” stretching across 1,100 acres of “green rolling hills,” “small shimmering lakes” and horse pastures, within the Ozark foothills and boasting a Christian-based therapeutic program “unlike other residential resources” and which prided itself on what it called “Total Concept Healing.”

As impoverished, inner-city kids from all over the country were sent to the secluded town of well under 1,000 people, the alleged abuse and the cover-up continued from the 1980s into the 2000s — and involved others beyond just Presley — the plaintiffs' complaint alleges.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

Among the allegations in the suit is one about a girl in her early teens — identified only as Jane Doe 1 — being repeatedly sexually abused and raped by “Staff Member W,” who allegedly told her he wanted to marry her once she turned 16 and her stint at The Lord’s Ranch was over.

“Jane Doe 1 was eventually forced to marry Staff Member W at the The Lord's Ranch chapel, without her parents' knowledge, consent or presence,” the suit alleges, noting that deputy administrator Jiles officiated the wedding.

The girl “ultimately escaped Lord's Ranch and obtained a divorce,” according to the suit.

Although the federal court docket does not yet list a lawyer representing counselor Presley, Gould tells PEOPLE a lawyer reached out to their legal team claiming to represent him.

PEOPLE called that lawyer’s office, but the receptionist said he could not confirm the lawyer’s current cases and the lawyer has not responded to PEOPLE’s email request for comment.

After commuting Suhl’s sentence in 2019, former President Trump emphasized in a statement Suhl’s “faith-based” approach to youth treatment and called him “a pillar of his community before his prosecution and a generous contributor to several charities.”

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.