A US company has been ordered to pay 32 mentally disabled workers USD 240 million in damages for what government lawyers described as years of around-the-clock abuse, including being denied bathroom breaks and being kicked in the groin.
A federal jury in ruled today that Henry's Turkey Service of Texas violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and awarded the former workers USD 7.5 million in damages apiece. The defunct company is unlikely to be able to pay that amount, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has suggested it will seek to recover company assets worth up to USD 4 million.
Henry's ran the rural bunkhouse where the men lived while working at an Iowa turkey plant. Officials closed the house in 2009 due to unsafe conditions.
According to social workers who treated the men, most of them in their 50s and 60s, after the home was closed, the men said they had been subjected to harsh discipline and abuse by their Henry's supervisors. They said they had been forced to work through illness and injuries, denied bathroom breaks, locked in their rooms, kicked in the groin and, in one case, handcuffed to a bed. Supervisors also subjected the men to random acts of cruelty, such making them eat hot peppers, "just for laughs," EEOC attorney Robert Canino said.
