Abuse Cases

A former state hospital patient, formally convicted of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old boy, stalked a Topeka nursing home that cares for mentally ill adults. Free to mingle with the home's disabled residents, he attacked and beat a male patient, a man in his early 40's with schizophrenia, in the summer of 2004. Commenting on the incident, Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, said, “They knew about it. They didn't stop it. That is despicable, deplorable, and inexcusable." - April 16, 2006, Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal

One resident sat for hours at a time in her own urine and feces because the facility did not have enough staff to take her to the bathroom to change her. About two weeks before her death, nurses saw ants crawling on her. In the April 18, 2005 Times Picayune article, Katherine Harrington, an Alabama lawyer who handles nursing home cases in several states said, “If you would pay the weakest link – which is often the case – a fair wage for a very difficult job, you would get better-quality employees. But they [nursing homes] won't do that because it affects the bottom line.” - November 18, 2005, St. Louis Post – Dispatch

Negligence at a nursing home in Tinley Park, Illinois resulted in an elderly resident contracting flesh-eating bacterium that landed her in hospice care. The article also reported a New Orleans man who sued a facility after being told a false cause of death for his aunt. The belief that his 93-year-old aunt died a natural death was shattered when he learned that she had drowned in a whirlpool. He had told the staff that his aunt did not want to be put in the whirlpool and should have been monitored. - August 24, 2005, Chicago Tribune

An Evansville, Indiana nursing home official told a family member that her mother-in- law had fallen and injured herself, but a conscientious nurse told her the truth: A disturbed patient with a criminal past had slammed a frail 83-year-old woman into a wall so violently that she was knocked unconscious. She never regained consciousness and died three weeks later. “It's an outrageous combination of the mentally ill and criminals warehoused with traditional nursing home residents,” said the family member. A study by Perfect Cause, a California-based nonprofit organization found 380 registered sex offenders residing in 289 nursing homes in 37 states as of June 2004. - May 11, 2005, Kansas City (Mo.) Daily Record

Review of 250 wrongful-death lawsuits filed against nursing homes since 1999 revealed numerous allegations. A resident at a Lake Charles-area home was beaten to death by his roommate after the staff failed to separate them. A mentally impaired man at a north Louisiana home accidentally set himself on fire when the staff did not prevent him from smoking a cigarette while on an oxygen tube. A woman at a southwest Louisiana home choked to death when the aides who were supposed to help feed her left her alone with a plate of food. - April 21, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune

A 19-year old employee at a New Orleans nursing home admitted raping a 92-year-old woman suffering from dementia. - October 25, 2004, New Orleans City Business

The General Accounting Office found many problem cases, “A resident reported to a licensed practical nurse that she had been raped in the nursing home. Although the nurse recorded this information in the resident's chart, she did not notify nursing home management. She also allegedly discouraged the resident from telling anyone else.” - March 3, 2002, New York Times

CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales, during the evening news on February 25, 2000, commented that Helen Love, a 75-year-old woman, weighing 95 pounds, had been attacked by a male nursing home staff member at a nursing home in Sacramento, Calif. The woman decided the only way she could survive was to play dead. Eventually he left her room. Two days after she was interviewed on videotape, the woman died. - February 25, 2000, CBS Evening News broadcast