Jessica Alopaeus has created a petition asking that the Florida Institute for Neurological Rehabilitation be investigated because of abuse that her brother and other patients suffered there:

The Florida Institute for Neurological Rehabilitation (FINR) markets itself as a treatment center with country club-like accommodations for brain injured patients from around the country.

But what FINR doesn’t tell potential patients is that Florida’s Department of Children and Families has received 477 allegations of abuse or neglect at the center since 2005. That there are videos that resulted in the prosecution of staffers who abused autistic patients, that there have been multiple wrongful death lawsuits settled, and that Washington, DC, recalled 21 patients from the facility following an investigation into human rights abuses. A congressional investigation even found that staff has unnecessarily prolonged stays at the center just to boost revenues. 

Despite all these highly disturbing findings, FINR continues to operate and accept patients.

I didn’t know all of this when my brother Peter Price went to FINR in 2009 to recover from a brain injury. I thought he’d be receiving quality care. Instead, he told me, FINR staff members would hold him down and punch him in the face and groin. The abuse got so bad that Peter severely injured himself -- by swallowing fish hooks and batteries -- because he saw no other way out of the center.

Two men who worked at the Institute were caught on camera abusing an autistic man:

Hardee County prosecutors have charged two FINR staffers with abusing Danny Silva, a 21-year-old autistic patient. Video of the alleged crime shows two large men flanking a smaller figure on a sofa as they punch, elbow and slap him at least 30 times. The blows often come after moans from the man in the middle, which appear to be making it hard for his assailants to hear the TV.

“Shut up, man,” they say in the video, taped by a FINR staffer, according to police. “You are getting on my damn nerves,” one of the hitters tells the smaller man between two elbow shots. A woman in nurse’s clothes shows up in the video to give the alleged victim his medicine.

Please go here and sign.  This shouldn't happen any more.