Group Home Workers Charged With Running 'Developmentally Disabled Fight Club'
Feb. 8 2014, Published 1:02 p.m. ET
Four workers at a group home for the developmentally disabled have been charged with running a brutal fight club, ordering one patient to beat another one senseless, and videotaping it.
The brutality came to light because someone who received the video violated the famed first rule of fight club: "You do not talk about fight club" -- the often quoted line from the cult hit Brad Pitt movie -- and alerted authorities.
"These defendants encouraged two developmentally disabled adults to participate in, what I said on record, is a developmentally disabled fight club," special prosecutor Jacqueline Kagan, of the New York State Justice Center for Protection of People with Special Needs, explained.
Erin McHenry, Justin McDonald, Stephen Komara and Rosemary Vanni all face felony charges of endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person,.
It showed one man knocking over the other in the wheelchair, said the prosecutor, while the defendants laughed and praised them for the violence.
The patients are in their 50s but have the mental capacity of preschoolers. They were residents of the Independent Group Home Living program in Hampton Bays on New York's Long Island.
"They're severely mentally disabled, and these individuals are there to protect them, not be entertained by them," Kagan said.