Navigating the world while raising children with a disability is no easy feat. But more than the extra time and effort children with special needs require, one of the biggest challenges can be the ignorance of other people.
And not just individuals but entire institutions can be guilty of this. One mom was reminded of this sad fact when she and her 15-year-old son were removed from a movie theater recently.
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Christine Gallinaro's son John is autistic and nonverbal.
The mom, who lives in Holmdel, New Jersey, took John to the movies back in June, according to CBS News. Sometime during the outing, he had to use the restroom. Gallinaro took John, who has autism and is nonverbal, into the women’s restroom with her. The decision caused the theater to remove both the mother and son.
“All this time, it was humiliating and scary for my son,” she told WPIX.
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Gallinaro said no one in the restroom complained.
Instead, they all seemed to understand that her son had special needs and needed an adult to assist him, she shared. But the theater manager saw things differently and let both Gallinaro and John know that she disapproved. The mom tried to reason with the manager but all to no avail.
“I asked her if there was a problem. I explained that he was disabled, and she said a grown man should not be in this bathroom,” Gallinaro said. There was no family restroom in the theater.
The theater manager called authorities.
The manager called security and later the police. Authorities removed Gallinaro and John from the theater, although Gallinaro said the police and security were sympathetic. Her issue wasn’t with the police; it was with the theater.
Now, the Gallinaro family is filing a lawsuit against the Cinemark theater in Hazlet, New Jersey. The family hopes it will bring awareness so other children with disabilities won’t have to experience the same thing.
“What happened that day was unlawful, wrong, and bizarre,” Austin Tobin, the Gallinaro family’s lawyer, told WPIX.
The theater has since tried to issue a refund.
While the family awaits the outcome, they have been supported by the public. “Since this happened and has been made public, there has been an overwhelming response of support, particularly from mothers of disabled children,” Gallinaro said, per WPIX.
In the days since the incident, the movie theater’s regional manager reached out to offer Gallinaro a refund, but the mom said they had been humiliated too much.
