Peter Antonellis, a compliance officer with the state’s Elder Affairs office, has become his agency’s biggest critic.

In a series of investigative stories this month on problems concerning the agency’s regulation of assisted living facilities, Antonellis has gone on the record with a harsh critique of his bosses.

He first went public in CommonWealth, saying the agency does almost no analysis of the information it gathers on seniors who fall down, wander off, are abused, or exploited. A week later he told the Boston Globe that “most elders and their families think this is a regulated industry, but we don’t have the staff to regulate it.”

For another story, he shared internal emails and documents with CommonWealth that indicate Elder Affairs let an Athol facility operate as an assisted living residence even though it wasn’t certified and it was unsafe.

Many state employees will whisper about internal goings-on off the record, but it is extremely rare for a lower-level public employee to start criticizing the agency publicly.

Gregory Sullivan, the former state inspector general who is now the research director at the Pioneer Institute, praised Antonellis for speaking up. “Every citizen in Massachusetts should pause a moment and think of the courageous actions of people like Peter Antonellis. It takes somebody who has guts, integrity, and selflessness to do what he has done,” he said.

Antonellis, who is quiet and soft-spoken, said he just became tired of no one listening. He has worked at the agency for 14 years; he earned $68,000 last year.

“Look, I go out to these places and I see these people and they’re entirely dependent on their professional caretakers,” Antonellis said. “Many of them are people with advanced dementia and they’re sitting around almost in a vegetative state in many instances. Some are living behind locked doors. My intention all along was to make sure that they’re safe and secure and live in a dignified manner as much as possible. . . . My whole purpose has been to protect these people.”

Antonellis decided to go public after noticing emails between agency officials and CommonWealth that raised many of the same issues he had brought up a year ago in a memo sent to top officials at the Elder Affairs agency as well as John Polanowicz, the governor’s secretary of health and human services.

On Thursday, Antonellis feared he was about to be fired. Access to his computer was blocked and he was summoned to a meeting with a number of upper-level managers from the state. When he showed up at the sit-down, the officials told him they wanted to hear his concerns.

Antonellis said he laid out in detail what he sees as serious problems at Elder Affairs. He said he told the officials that assisted living doesn’t belong under the domain of Elder Affairs.

“I said that a huge problem is that Elder Affairs treats assisted living as a residential model,” he says. “But the reality is it’s a medical model because many of the residents have serious medical conditions such as dementia. So I told them that the responsibility for regulating assisted living needs be moved into the Department of Public Health, which has the skills in place to regulate health and medical programs such as assisted living.”

Antonellis said he apologized periodically. “I said, ‘You know I’m sorry if I sound a little emotional, but human services has been my life for the past 15 years, and it’s been hell for the past six.’ No one’s listening.”

Officials at Elder Affairs declined comment on Antonellis.