Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Jan Reshetar stood up at a press conference last week and said she thought her mother-in-law’s agitation was caused by her Alzheimer’s disease. She was mortified to learn that her 84-year-old family member was actually trying desperately to communicate through her cognitively impaired state, trying to tell her family about the humiliating abuse and sexual taunting she was subjected to for months as a resident of the Good Samaritan Society nursing home in Albert Lea, Minn.

“What they did was awful. My mother-in-law tried to tell us … she did everything to keep people away — biting, hitting, striking out,” she was reported as saying in a story by the Star Tribune. “Somebody needs to stand up for our moms and grandparents.”

The abuse is part of a investigation into the “attacks-for-thrills” case where six nursing home aides were accused of abusing cognitively impaired residents at Good Samaritan Society for on-the-job entertainment. According to prosecutors, the aides held down residents, put their fingers in residents’ mouths and noses to quiet their cries and screams for help, hit and rubbed their breasts and genitals, and sexually “humped” some residents.

Two of the accused – 19-year-old Brianna Broitzman and 18-year-old Ashton Larson – are charged as adults with assault, abuse of a vulnerable adult by a caregiver, abuse of a vulnerable adult with sexual contact, disorderly conduct, and failure to report suspected maltreatment. All are gross misdemeanors. Four other aides, all charged as juveniles, are charged with not reporting the suspected abuse. The Freeborn County Attorney says Broitzman and Larson will likely face suspended jail sentences and probation, which family members think is an outrage.

A family member, who is not named, contacted Wes Bledsoe, president and founder of A Perfect Cause, a watchdog group that fights “to end needless suffering and preventable deaths while protecting the rights of citizens from corporate greed and negligence.” Bledsoe came to Albert Lea to organize a town hall meeting, which was preceded by the press conference. At the gathering, Bledsoe denounced the county attorney who filed the charges, Good Samaritan, and the Minnesota State Health Department. Bledsoe argued that had the two women charged with the crimes been men, they would be facing much more serious felony charges instead of misdemeanors.

“They thought they could get away with it, because the residents had dementia, couldn’t speak up for themselves. Well, if they are guilty, maybe they will get away with a slap on the wrists,” the Star Tribune quoted Bledsoe.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.