Neighbors Sue Family of Autistic Boy, Call Him a ‘Public Nuisance’
A judge will decide the next step in an ongoing lawsuit against the parents of an autistic boy in California who allegedly menaced other neighborhood children. (Photo: Getty Images)
A California lawsuit that aims to declare an allegedly out-of-control autistic boy, 11, a “public nuisance” is stirring debate as it heads back into court next week.
The case was originally filed in June 2014 by two couples against the boy’s parents, Vidyut Gopal and Parul Agrawal, all of whom lived in the same Sunnyvale neighborhood. The boy and his parents, however, have since moved. The suit alleges that the boy menaced children in the community and that his parents failed to take appropriate action to stop him, creating an “as-yet unquantified chilling effect on the otherwise ‘hot’ local real estate market” and causing people to “feel constrained in the marketability of their homes as this issue remains unresolved and the nuisance remains unabated,” according to the San Jose Mercury News.
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The plaintiffs in the case — Robert and Marci Flowers, Bindu Pothen, and Kumaran Santhanam, according to court records — seek undisclosed damages as well as a permanent injunction against the boy to prevent him from assaulting anyone in the neighborhood going forward. (A judge already issued a temporary injunction on the matter nearly a year ago.) On Tuesday, the parties will return to court as a judge decides whether or not to release the boy’s school and medical records to the plaintiffs — all of which have been subpoenaed by the plaintiffs.
Meanwhile, news of the lawsuit has effectively pitted the plaintiffs — parents who claim their kids were attacked — against the autism community in general, causing much angst on both sides.
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The San Francisco Autism Society has spoken out against the lawsuit and posted a lengthy statement on its website, calling the case, “extraordinary, unprecedented,” and one “that could have profound implications for all of us affected by autism.” It further warns that, should a permanent injunction be granted, “it could turn autism families into criminals for minor behaviors of their children” and ensure that “autism parents and caregivers would live in constant fear that ‘one false move’ by their significantly disabled charges could turn them, literally, into criminals subject to contempt of court punishments, including imprisonment.”
Robert Flowers, on the other hand, tells Yahoo Parenting, “The case is being presented to the public as us trying to ban an autistic child from his neighborhood for ‘minor transgressions,’ and how dangerous a precedent it is. This is wildly false. It has nothing to do with autism.” In fact, he alleges, the boy in question “viciously attacked my son on his 4th birthday, charging at him without warning, ripping him off his bike, slamming him to the ground, and shaking him by the hair with both hands.”
Flowers further states that it took his wife, a neighbor, and two babysitters to pry the boy away, that his son was “traumatized” and “could have been killed,” and that it was “not the first time” there had been such an incident. They declined to have the boy arrested “out of compassion,” he says, noting that they filed a lawsuit as a “last resort” after communication with the boy’s parents broke down. Now, he claims, the parents are engaging in a “smear campaign” against himself and his wife and “have attempted to hide behind autism as a way to escape culpability and responsibility.”
Gopal and Agrawal’s defense attorney, Sadhana Narayan, did not return a call from Yahoo Parenting seeking comment; the firm representing the plaintiffs, Hopkins & Carley of San Jose, also did not respond to Yahoo Parenting. But the boy’s father, an engineer at a Silicon Valley company, according to the San Jose Mercury News, told the paper, “This has been pretty devastating for us, but we are doing our best to cope with it.”
Stephen Rosenbaum, a disability rights expert and associate professor of law at the Golden Gate University of Law, believes the case should have never made its way into a courtroom. “It’s kind of absurd it’s gone this far,” Rosenbaum, who has been following the case closely, tells Yahoo Parenting. He calls the request for the boy’s medical records “just more aggressive, harassing tactics,” adding that, in general, “part of the problem here is that it’s calling for a preemptive action where there’s no longer a pending danger,” since the family has moved away. That alone, he says, gives the families “good reason to settle” rather than continue with the lawsuit.
Rosenbaum adds that the aim to declare the boy a “public nuisance” is unprecedented. “That’s usually something that’s used in the case of a pig sty, a feed lot, or a yard [overrun] with weeds,” he says, and in this case “is a totally absurd legal tool.” He says he’s read reports from both sides of the case and has found the accounts to be “totally at odds with each other” and a virtual “he said-she said.” He adds, “I’m sure there have been some incidents that have been unsettling. But we do have a community dispute resolution process, and it seems to me that’s the way to have dealt with something like this.”
But Robert and Marci Flowers, at this point, see no other way. “We seek assurance that their child will never be allowed to attack our children again,” Marci tells Yahoo Parenting. “Where is the outrage for my son? Who is there to rock him to sleep? Who is there to quiet him when he wakes from his nightmares about this? We are not the wrong ones here,” she adds. “We are the victims. My son was attacked. We did not do anything wrong.”
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