Charla Pereau's Foundation for His Ministry is rightly proud of its long list of accomplishments helping the homeless and orphans in Mexico.
The San Clemente-based charity raises hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from around the world to physically and spiritually feed the underprivileged south of the border.
But a new lawsuit alleges that the foundation is purposefully endangering the Mexican orphans by giving them expired medicine, according to records in Orange County Superior Court.
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The allegation doesn't come from just anyone. It's from one of her sons, 56-year-old Dana Pereau, and another former foundation insider, Antoinette Kirk. They say they were fired from their jobs after repeatedly complaining that the charity was shipping bad drugs from its Orange County warehouse to its Mexican clinics, moves Pereau–a Southern California lawyer–and Kirk claim violated California law.
How did the foundation board react to the allegation?
“They believed that … if it were discovered that the Foundation for His Ministry was dispensing expired medications, there would be legal implications for the clinic and its donors would cease contributing,” the lawsuit alleges.
When plans were made to dispose of the expired drugs, board members ordered Pereau to “stop complaining” and also accused him of suffering from mental illness, according to the lawsuit.
Pereau and Kirth filed the lawsuit because they say it is illegal to retaliate against whistleblowers.
(I'm guessing Thanksgiving at the Perea house won't be too fun this year.)
Foundation officials did not respond to attempts to reach them for comment.
You can visit the charity's web site
HERE.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
