Thursday, August 20, 2009

Living with the Horror of Elderly Abuse in Nursing Homes

A True StoryI will never forget the day my mother came to me and told me that she had been up all night at the emergency room at the hospital with my 90-year-old grandmother, who was a resident in a nursing home. My mom through tears stated that my grandmother had
?claimed she had been raped by an employee. I think at that moment my heart stopped. A million questions go through your head, you ask yourself can this really be true? Did this really happen?The answer is yes it did. Shockingly enough, the employee was 45, had worked mostly on the surgical floor, but needed extra hours and decided to help out on the nursing home floor. It happened on his third time working on the floor, the rape took 10 minutes, and his act destroyed my family. So why did this happen??In New York State,a background check, criminal history is done when an employee works for a nursing home, but the person is allowed to work until the investigation is completed but has to be supervised . This background check can take up to 120 days to come back. His partner went to lunch without him.He had a criminal record. We only found out about it when it hit our local newspapers that he had been in prison for 18 months for numerous drug related charges. It took only one day after he had been arrested for the newspapers to find out he had a record, so you tell me what is wrong with this picture??My grandmother had never ever had anything happen to her, her whole life, until this happened. She had dementia, he thought he would get away with it, but she rang the bell and told on him immediately after it happened, my grandmother saved so many people on the floor that night, from it happening to anyone else. She is my hero, and always will be for what she did.Our lives went into a total tail spin, it was all over the news, in the newspapers, for over a year. The trial when it finally came went on for it seemed forever, dna matched the rape kit, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.Living with the Horror of Elderly Abuse in Nursing HomesOriginally from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2081897/living_with_the_horror_of_elderly_abuse.html


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