UES iBRAIN School Sued For Abuse, Harassment

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A former employee of an Upper East Side school for special needs children is suing the school for gender discrimination, sexual harassment, a hostile and an abusive work environment.

The lawsuit filed by former marketing and public relations employee Katelyn Newman claims that her former employer, the International Center for the Brain, or iBRAIN, a specialty school for children ages 5-21 with brain injuries and brain disorders, operates an "extremely filthy and unsanitary" school devoid of resources and more concerned about their bottom line — and state contracts — than the welfare of the vulnerable children entrusted to their care.

But it wasn't just the physical school that Newman claims was filthy: many of iBRAIN's male executives, including her boss Patrick Donahue, subjected her "and other women working at iBRAIN to sexual harassment by making sexually suggestive and inappropriate remarks, commenting on aspects of their physical presence and dress," in addition to an abusive and toxic work environment that Newman's attorney said left her client "severely damaged."

"“This is major crime,” Newman’s attorney, Kenneth McCallion, told The Daily Beast, who first reported the story last week.

Newman goes on to describe Donahue in court documents as "vulgar, disgusting, impulsive, and money-hungry."

iBRAIN did not reply to a request for comment.

Rats, Cockroaches, A Smelly Leak

In the suit Newman, who worked at the school for only a few months this past fall, notes that from her first day, conditions at iBRAIN's East 91st Street location disturbed her.

"The cockroaches were so prevalent that they were sometimes nested in students’ wheelchairs," Newman claims.

Floors, the suit claims, were generally left unwashed. Bathrooms lacked soap and toilet paper. Leaky plumbing was remedied by staff stuffing them with nearby detritus, like "Dorito bags or whatever else was readily available."

A foul residue began to leak inside of a therapist's office and a rat's carcass sat unmolested for "an extended period of time," the suit claims, before it was removed. Broken air condition left students to swelter, with indoor temperatures reaching 86 degrees, so hot that "some of the children started having seizures more frequently than usual."

Failures And Frauds

Newman claims that in addition to her observed lack of basic sanitation and maintenance, the school suffered from "a severe lack of equipment, including wheelchairs, etc., for the children/students at iBRAIN," despite later hearing that the school receives between $100-350,000 per student from the New York Department of Education.

iBRAIN, the suit notes, also received nearly $2 million in dollars from the federal Paycheck Protection Program and other aid between 2020 and 2021.

Teacher turnover was so bad at iBRAIN, the suit says, that the education program was "impaired." There were was a "lack of proper tools to track students' progress," Newman claims, and parents of kids enrolled at iBRAIN told her that their kids "were not receiving any therapy whatsoever."

Donahue and his wife, the suit claims, formed a transportation company that would regularly bill the state's Department of Education with transit costs, despite that "a substantial amount of these charges were fictitious."

Teacher were also told to regularly falsify progress reports by school management, the suit claims. Paraprofessionals were also told to complete nursing tasks, such as fixing students' gastrostomy tubes, "even though they were not certified to perform those tasks and were not experienced enough to do it without causing unnecessary bruising and other complications."

As a result, one student, the suit reads, was sent to the hospital because of impeded circulation.

Others at the school happily took on roles they had no qualifications for.

The suit says that the school's chief innovations officer, Dr. Victor Pedro, who claimed to be "a neurologist or neuroscientist, was actually a chiropractor from Rhode Island. Pedro claimed to be an innovator of what he callee Cortical Integrated Therapy, "but he seemed to be the only practitioner of this controversial (and largely rejected) so-called therapy," Newman claims.

Pedro showed Newman "various controversial techniques that had not been approved by the FDA or apparently any other governmental agency, and which basically," the suit claims, "used children as human guinea pigs for his experiments."

Newman says that other iBRAIN employees told her that the school regularly failed to vet staff, including one man, who claimed to be a Harvard educated doctor named Dr. Alim Shariff but was actually a man named Rodney Robinson who was eventually charged by federal authorities for fraudulently posing as a medical professional two years ago.

More recently, paychecks to employees have bounced, the suit claims, with some staffers told to pick up bags of cash held by Donahue's doorman instead.

Donohue, a lawyer, founded a predecessor to iBRAIN called iHOPE in 2013, where a whistleblower alleged that he "was simultaneously running a law firm to which iHOPE paid $165,000 per year as part of a scheme to funnel federal and state education funds to Donohue personally," according to reporting from amNY.

amNY further reports that Donohue's firm is representing several parents who are demanding public reimbursement for their tuition at iBRAIN.

A Boys Club And Retaliation

Newman claims in her suit that several of the male administrators regularly sexually harassed and abused younger female workers.

In addition to what Newman described as a "creepy lunch" with Pedro and regular sexually-laden comments about her appearance and dress, other staffers allegedly told her that the man had "inappropriately made it clear to them in various ways that he would like to have a personal and sexual relationship with them."

But what pushed Newman to finally leave was her treatment by Donahue.

She said that while he appeared to hint at a mentorship relationship, it soon turned into one of hostility and abuse, with the school's leader shouting at her behind closed doors, the suit says.

Donahue subjected many female staffers to similar "toxic" abuse, the suit writes, and would frequently take male employees out for "long lunches."

After a number of episodes of abuse and humiliation, including further sexual harassment from an external PR team, Newman quit in November — but Donahue convinced her to stay on after offering promises of more pay and other changes.

But the abuse, including an all-staff email Donahue sent asking Newman to convert a document to a PDF file, which sent her home in tears, continued, Newman quit for good last month.

As news of her resignation spread, former staff and parents began reaching out to Newman with a litany of claims about iBRAIN, which the suit lists in full.

When iBRAIN became aware of these interactions, Newman said the school sent "Cease and Desist" letters to her that were to be sent to her parents, her fiancee and her extended professional network.

The letter claimed that Newman had violated '"the New York State Child Abuse and Neglect statutes,” and that she had spread “false, inaccurate and unfounded information that is damaging to iBRAIN.'"

Newman is seeking damages to be determined in a jury trial.