A Fremont-based speech and occupational therapy center faces a major lawsuit filed in June 2026 after a behavioral technician allegedly sexually abused a non-verbal two-year-old child during therapy sessions. The family’s legal team, Cerri, Boskovich & Allard, is seeking accountability through negligent hiring and negligent supervision claims against the Center for Speech, Language, and Occupational Therapy, Inc.—a critical reminder that even specialized therapeutic facilities can fail to protect the youngest and most vulnerable patients. The defendant, Benjamin Amlicke, then 23 or 24 years old, was arrested on January 29, 2026, after the child’s mother observed suspicious activity on the facility’s surveillance camera on January 28.
The abuse allegedly began during Amlicke’s first therapy session with the child on January 7, 2026, and continued across multiple documented instances. This case raises urgent questions about screening, background investigation, and real-time supervision at facilities trusted to provide therapeutic care. The timing, evidence, and circumstances suggest systemic failures that allowed someone with documented behavioral risk factors to have unsupervised access to a toddler over weeks. For families placing children with specialized care providers—particularly non-verbal children who cannot report abuse—this lawsuit underscores the absolute necessity of rigorous vetting, continuous monitoring, and swift intervention protocols.
Table of Contents
- What Led to the Abuse and How Long It Continued
- Negligent Hiring and the Red Flags That Were Missed
- Background Screening and Social Media as Tools for Prevention
- What Families Need to Know About Therapy Center Safety
- Supervision Systems and Why They Fail
- The Impact of Abuse in Therapeutic Settings
- Legal Accountability and Court Proceedings
What Led to the Abuse and How Long It Continued
The abuse was not discovered through mandatory reporting by facility staff or other caregivers; it was discovered by the child’s mother through a camera she apparently had access to, which captured the activity. This passive detection method—a parent monitoring their own child—is not a safeguard; it is a failure of active supervision and rapid incident response. The alleged abuse did not occur once and stop; video surveillance documented multiple instances spanning from January 7 through at least late January 2026.
In each incident, Amlicke allegedly fondled the child’s genitals over their clothing during what should have been therapeutic sessions. The delay between the first incident (January 7) and the arrest (January 29) represents a three-week window during which a child remained in contact with someone accused of abuse. Even more troubling, the arrest occurred only after a parent’s independent observation—not due to staff vigilance, facility protocols, or mandatory reporting triggers that should exist at any childcare or therapeutic setting. This gap illustrates how easily abuse can escalate when screening is insufficient and real-time observation is weak or absent.
Negligent Hiring and the Red Flags That Were Missed
The negligent hiring claim centers on one stark fact: Amlicke was actively posting sexually explicit content on social media, including full-body nude images and graphic pornography, both before and during his employment at the facility. This is not a hidden criminal history buried in a sealed record; this is public-facing content that a thorough pre-employment background check—or even basic social media screening—should have flagged immediately. Many organizations now include social media review as part of background screening, particularly for positions involving children, elderly adults, and other vulnerable populations.
Yet Amlicke was hired and had direct, unsupervised contact with a toddler. The question is not whether the flag existed; it is whether anyone was looking for it. Negligent supervision compounds the hiring failure: even if some aspect of Amlicke’s background was not caught before hire, robust in-person supervision during early sessions with vulnerable clients should have created multiple checkpoints. The lawsuit names negligent supervision as a separate claim, implying that once employed, Amlicke’s sessions with the child lacked appropriate oversight—no direct observation, no camera monitoring, no protective protocols that would have interrupted the abuse on day one rather than allowing it to continue for weeks.
Background Screening and Social Media as Tools for Prevention
The presence of publicly posted sexually explicit material—prior to and concurrent with employment—represents a critical preventive tool that many organizations neglect: comprehensive social media screening. Background checks traditionally focus on criminal records, sex offender registries, and employment history. Social media screening goes further, looking for behavioral patterns, explicit content, red-flag language, or associations that predict risk before a crime is charged. A behavioral technician posting graphic pornography online raises immediate concerns about judgment, impulse control, and sexual boundaries—traits directly relevant to safeguarding children. For therapy centers and childcare facilities, the limitation is often cost and standardization.
Third-party background screening services vary widely in thoroughness; not all include social media review as a standard package, and some facilities may choose the cheapest option over the most comprehensive. Additionally, social media content can be removed or hidden, and platforms require access to discover it. The warning here is stark: the absence of a criminal record does not indicate the absence of risk. An individual can have no prior convictions and still be actively engaged in behavior that signals danger. The failure to conduct social media screening—or to act on findings if screening occurred—represents a preventable gap in the hiring process.
What Families Need to Know About Therapy Center Safety
Families placing children in speech, occupational, or behavioral therapy settings should ask specific, concrete questions before enrollment: Does the facility use background checks that include social media screening? Is there continuous video monitoring of therapy sessions, with footage accessible to parents? Are sessions supervised by a senior clinician or is one-on-one contact with junior staff permitted without oversight? Are parents permitted to observe sessions or access recordings? Does the facility have a mandatory reporting protocol that requires staff to report any concern immediately, not at shift end or during supervision meetings? The distinction matters because a camera in the room is not the same as real-time observation by trained staff. A facility might film sessions but lack a protocol for flagging concerning behavior, leaving footage as evidence after the fact rather than as a prevention tool.
Real-time supervision means a licensed clinician is present, watching, and empowered to stop a session if anything seems wrong. For non-verbal children—who cannot verbally report discomfort, pain, or abuse—this level of vigilance is not optional; it is essential. Compare this to facilities that offer weekly direct observation and video review with parents as standard practice; those facilities signal that transparency and safety are built into their model from the start.
Supervision Systems and Why They Fail
Even well-intentioned facilities struggle with consistent, comprehensive supervision. The barriers include staffing cost (observing sessions full-time requires additional personnel), workflow disruption (clinicians feel watched or monitored, potentially affecting therapeutic rapport), false positives (flagging innocent behavior as concerning wastes resources and credibility), and complacency (after months without incident, vigilance often decreases). A behavioral technician trusted with 15-20 hours of client contact per week is expected to be observed directly, perhaps 10-20% of the time in many settings, leaving 80-90% of contact unobserved. That model assumes the individual is trustworthy; if they are not, it creates a predictable window for abuse. The additional risk is that supervision is often peer-based rather than hierarchical.
A behavioral technician’s sessions might be observed by another technician of similar level, not by a licensed supervisor or director. Such peers may be less likely to report concerning behavior due to workplace relationships, loyalty, or lack of confidence in their own judgment. The limitation is widespread and difficult to solve without significant additional resources and cultural change. Warning: if a facility prioritizes cost-cutting, you will see it reflected in supervision ratios first. Offices that cannot afford robust supervision often cannot afford thorough background checks either.
The Impact of Abuse in Therapeutic Settings
Children attend therapy centers with existing vulnerabilities—speech delays, motor development concerns, behavioral challenges, or other disabilities that make them dependent on specialized care. A non-verbal child is especially vulnerable because they cannot tell a parent, teacher, or another caregiver that something happened. They may show behavioral changes, fear of the facility, regression in skills, or physical marks or discomfort, but these signals are easy to miss or misattribute to other causes. The trauma of abuse in a setting designed to help compounds the harm: the child may develop fear or avoidance of all therapy, potentially delaying necessary developmental progress and reinforcing the very challenges the therapy aimed to address.
For families, this case demonstrates that specialized credentials and therapeutic focus do not guarantee safety. A center named for speech and occupational therapy is expected to be clinical, professional, and protective by virtue of its therapeutic mission. The assumption is often that anyone working there has been thoroughly vetted and holds high standards. This lawsuit is evidence that assumption can be dangerously wrong.
Legal Accountability and Court Proceedings
Benjamin Amlicke faces felony charges for lewd or lascivious act on a child under 14, filed by the Santa Clara County District Attorney. He was arrested on January 29, 2026, and held without bail—a decision indicating that the court considered him a flight or public safety risk. His first scheduled court appearance to enter a plea is set for August 7, 2026, in Santa Clara County Superior Court. The criminal case and the civil lawsuit are separate; Amlicke’s conviction or plea is not required for the family to prevail in the negligent hiring and supervision claims against the facility.
The facility can be found liable for negligent hiring even if the employee’s criminal case is still pending or results in acquittal, because the civil standard of proof (preponderance of the evidence) is lower than the criminal standard (beyond reasonable doubt). The lawsuit filed in June 2026 by Cerri, Boskovich & Allard on behalf of the family will likely involve discovery of the facility’s hiring records, background check documentation, training materials, supervision logs, and video footage. If those records show that no social media screening occurred, that supervision was sporadic or absent, or that staff raised concerns that were not addressed, the facility’s liability becomes clearer. The case may settle before trial or proceed to verdict; either way, it will set a precedent for what constitutes adequate safeguarding in therapy settings within Santa Clara County and beyond.
