Push to change PA law protecting people with special needs from assault continues as cases build

PITTSBURGH — It’s the laugh and the smile that gets Heather Harold every time.

“He’s my baby brother, and I’ve been in a few playground brawls over protecting him,” Harold said.

But what she couldn’t protect Nicholas from was the people charged with caring for him at the McGuire Memorial Home in Beaver County.

“They had mouthwash put in their eyes. Nicholas was contracted so his arms didn’t move, he couldn’t wipe things out of his eyes,” Harold said.

The alleged torture of Nicholas and at least 13 other victims was only discovered after Nicholas died and videos of the more than a year’s worth of acts were discovered on a suspect’s phone.

“They could not stand the light that was inside of him and they did everything they could to try to put it out, but they could never touch that super special part inside of him,” Harold said.

He’s not alone. In Elizabeth Township this summer, video surfaced of two caregivers repeatedly punching Andrew Erickson’s non-verbal autistic son Aiden.

“We are talking about the most vulnerable people in our society. This is a nonverbal autistic child who doesn’t have the mentality of a 14-year-old,” Erickson said.

In these cases, the suspects were only charged with misdemeanor crimes meaning there is no jail time at the state level.

“The punishment should fit the crime. This is something that is going to cause long-term damage to him and long-term damage to our family. We don’t even know the long-term effects it’s going to have on him,” Erickson said.

It’s a law that Indiana County Representative Jim Struzzi is still trying to change, five years after first introducing his bill on assault against a care-dependent person.

“I thought it would be a no-brainer. We’d introduce this bill, it would fly right to the governor’s desk and it hasn’t happened,” Struzzi said.

It came after a video showed a group of people on a trail in Indiana County in 2019 knowingly attacking Cody Overdorff, a mentally disabled man. Those suspects also only faced misdemeanors.

“It’s very frustrating because what happened to Cody continues to happen to other people and unless we make it known we are not going to tolerate these types of things people are going to continue to do it,” Struzzi said.

“His law would have made all the difference in the world for us,” Harold said.

It’s a frustrating fight for Harold as she continues to see new cases on the news.

“You think good guys win; bad guys lose. The law is protected, but what I have come discover when it comes to people who are special need,s it doesn’t necessarily fit into these cookie-cutter laws that we have. It’s a matter that we need to change these laws because we need to protect these people who cannot protect themselves. We have to,” Harold said.

But she told Channel 11 that every time she picks up the phone to get another lawmaker on board, she sees that smile.

“For his death to have to be tied to something so ugly, I sit there and think it can’t be for nothing. Something has to come out of this, what he went through has to mean and change something,” Harold said.

While it’s too late this year for a law change as the bill hasn’t made it out of the Judiciary Committee as the session comes to a close, Struzzi plans to introduce the bill for a fourth time when the next session begins in the new year.

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