New York Lawmaker Settles Suit Over Disabled Son’s Care

A New York assemblyman and longtime advocate for the disabled has settled a federal lawsuit alleging his disabled son was hit and verbally abused at the Long Island group home where he lives.

The suit, settled for $120,000, was filed last year by Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg and his wife, Ellen, who claimed that AHRC Nassau was responsible for an employee they allege repeatedly abused their son Ricky, now 55.

AHRC is a local chapter of the nation’s largest provider of service to people with developmental disabilities.

According to an internal report cited in the lawsuit, staff members told investigators that they saw Dwayne Edwards hit Ricky Weisenberg in the back of the head, flick his ears and neck with his finger and call him “nasty and worthless” and derogatory names.

The internal report concluded “the allegation of physical and psychological abuse is substantiated,” according to the suit, which sought compensatory and punitive damages.

AHRC Nassau said Edwards was “immediately relieved of his duties” after the allegation was reported in April 2009 and fired days later after an internal investigation.

Edwards denied the allegations. He had never been accused of any such conduct before or since, his attorney Peter Biging said Monday, noting he has continued to work elsewhere. “He was prepared to defend himself at trial,” he said.

The settlement includes $43,000 for attorney fees and establishment of a trust for Ricky Weisenberg.

U.S District Judge Joanna Seybert, in Brooklyn, deemed the terms “adequate and reasonable” and denied the defendants’ request to keep them confidential, saying they failed to overcome the presumption of public access.

Harvey Weisenberg, a Nassau County Democrat, was notified in 2009 of the incidents involving his son under a state law he sponsored named for Jonathan Carey, a disabled 13-year-old who was smothered in 2007 by an aide at O.D. Heck, a state residential facility near Albany. The state is now closing that facility in a movement toward community-based programs for disabled New Yorkers.

Attorney Ilann Maazel, who also represented the Weisenberg family, obtained $5 million in damages from the state in a federal lawsuit for the Carey family.

Calls to Maazel and to David Blaxill, attorney for the nonprofit service agency, were not immediately returned.