A 72-year-old man was arrested Monday and charged with molesting a a 54-year-old woman with the mental capacity of a 5-year-old at their nursing home, police said.
The nursing home resident was charged with lewd and lascivious battery on a disabled person. He was being held today at the county jail on $10,000 bail.
At 3:30 p.m. April 30, the man was seen touching the woman’s breast, his arrest affidavit says. He had been warned several times to not have contact with her or engage in inappropriate conduct with her, according to an arrest affidavit. For more, read the story.
The nursing home did not do enough to prevent this criminal behavior. The story notes that the man had been warned. More should have been done to keep this man away from the victim. A nursing home or assisted living facility is responsible for
identifying patients with a history of disruptive or inappropriate
conduct or who exhibit other behaviors that make them more likely to be
involved in an altercation. In that regard, the nursing home or
assisted living facility must identify the factors (e.g. illness,
environment, etc.) that increase the risks for individual patients of
an altercation or assault. The care plan team of the nursing home or
assisted living facility should review the risk assessment in the
presence of the patient and the patient’s family in order to identify
interventions that would prevent altercations.
The nursing home or assisted living facility can intervene helpfully
by providing sufficient staff to supervise its patients, providing safe
supervised areas for unrestricted movement, eliminating or reducing
underlying causes of distressed behavior (e.g. boredom and pain),
monitoring environmental influences (e.g. temperature, lighting, and
noise levels), evaluating staffing assignments to ensure staff members
are consistently responsible for the same patients (so changes in a
patient’s condition and behavior can be quickly identified), and
training staff consistently about how to approach a patient who is
agitated, combative, verbally or physically aggressive, or anxious.
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Robert W. Carter, Jr. is a Virginia attorney whose law practice is
dedicated to protecting the rights of the victims of nursing
home and assisted living neglect and abuse in Richmond, Roanoke,
Norfolk, Lynchburg, Danville, Charlottesville, and across Virginia.
