An employee of an assisted living facility was charged with a sex offense committed against a female patient. The assisted living facility specialized in providing care to patients with developmental disabilities. The aide was found in the patient’s room by another employee, who was “concerned about the circumstances.” An investigation revealed a forcible sex offense had occurred. Read more about what happened.
I find it interesting the assisted living facility’s president, when contacted by the press, made clear the aide had been fired after the offense. How much do you want to bet the assisted living facility didn’t run a thorough background check on the aide before hiring him? In Virginia, long term care facilities are required to run criminal histories on employees for crimes committed in Virginia, but not elsewhere. The Attorney General’s Office in Virginia recently proposed requiring nursing homes to obtain criminal histories from all 50 states before hiring an applicant. When I was contacted by the Attorney General’s Office for my thoughts, I was told the nursing home industry strongly opposed the proposed law because, as nursing home owners claimed, the cost of obtaining criminal history reports from all 50 states was too high!
Wait a minute . . . what do these reports cost? $5 a piece? That makes the price of obtaining these criminal histories from all 50 states $250? What do you think the victim’s family would have been willing to pay not to experience a forcible sex crime committed against their incapacitated loved one? Was $250 too much for the assisted living facility to pay to keep a sex predator from getting paid to walk the facility’s halls every day?
