Virginia Healthcare Worker Charged for Similar Sexual Assault
as Occurred in Arizona
Failure to protect residents from sexual assault by their caregivers or others is considered abuse and substandard quality of care, and may result in regulatory citations, lawsuits, and charges of submission of false claims with penalties.
Compliance Perspective – Sexual Assault
Policies/Procedures: The Compliance and Ethics Officer with the Administrator and Director of Nursing will review policies and procedures addressing the need for safeguarding residents to prevent sexual assaults.
Training: The Compliance and Ethics Officer, as well as every department head, will ensure that staff are trained to be alert to the need for protecting vulnerable residents and reporting in a timely manner any concerns about possible sexual assaults or other types of abuse.
Audit: The Compliance and Ethics Officer should personally conduct an audit of all vulnerable residents to consider who, for the safety of the resident and the caregiver alike, should always have two caregivers—especially at night and on weekends when there may be reduced oversight of care routines.
The recent sexual assault and impregnation of an incapacitated woman in Arizona made headlines across the country, and just recently another healthcare worker in a Virginia nursing home was charged with a similar crime. While the idea of sexual assaults perpetrated against vulnerable residents in nursing homes is horrible to grasp, the fact that these predators were only caught because the victims became pregnant is incomprehensible. This raises great concern and fear that there may be additional vulnerable patients being sexually abused in other nursing homes, and is suggestive of a failure by these facilities to safeguard the very people they are obligated to protect.
In this recent Virginia incident, a behavior specialist sexually assaulted a mentally incapacitated woman who became pregnant. The suspect was caught in a similar method to that of the Arizona man—the woman gave birth, and the baby’s DNA was matched via a court order to the identified suspect. Even more horrible is that the perpetrator is suspected of impregnating a second victim under his care. Investigators are waiting for the DNA analysis in that case.
Both of the accused men had unsupervised access to female patients. Criminal background checks conducted by their employers did not provide any indication that the men should not be employed. Ironically, without the DNA links, both men could still be employed by the facilities.
Statements by the news media indicate that sexual assaults by caregivers may be more widespread than previously thought. The media writers admit, “It’s impossible to know just how many victims are out there.”
