A Georgia couple has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Griffin, the Griffin Police Department and its police chief more than a year after the pastor and his wife were arrested and charged with falsely imprisoning people at an unlicensed group home.
The civil lawsuit asserted that defendants, including Griffin Police Chief Michael Yates, violated the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of Rev. Curtis Bankston and Sophia Bankston and damaged plaintiffs’ reputations by launching an “unfounded campaign of public disparagement accompanied by the deprivation of Plaintiffs’ property rights.”
When the allegations against the Bankstons were made public, police alleged that investigators found eight people between the ages of 25 and 65 living at an unlicensed group home in a leased space after learning that someone there was having a seizure. The couple, described by police as purported caretakers, were accused of falsely imprisoning mentally ill or physically disabled people in the basement of the property and taking control of their “finances, medication, and public benefits.”
“The ‘caretakers’ have been leasing this property for approximately fourteen months, using the basement as a personal care home for the individuals, which essentially imprisoned them against their will, which created an extreme hazard as the individuals could not exit the residence if there were an emergency,” the police department said at the time. “It was further determined that most, if not...
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