› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
In a developing story first reported by WSLS TV in Roanoke, Virginia, on Wednesday, now two former employees of the Waddell Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Galax have been arrested. They are charged with intentionally videotaping and taking photos of residents either undressing or in the nude, without the residents’ consent.
Nineteen-year-old Brianna Broitzman told a judge this week she is not responsible for physically and sexually abusing cognitively impaired residents at the Good Samaritan nursing home in the Albert Lea, Minn., nursing home where she worked as a nursing aide. Broitzman is one of four teenagers charged with abusing 15 residents at the home. She and former coworker Ashton Larson, who was 18 at the time of the incident, are the only two being charged as adults.
Nursing home officials did nothing to stop a male resident at a La Salle County, Illinois nursing home from sexually abusing 10 female patients and sexually soliciting several others, according to allegations in a report from the Illinois Department of Public Health.
It was almost unbelievable, the reports of patients being physically and sexually abused by nursing home aides at Good Samaritan Society of Albert Lea in Minnesota. The aides said they didn’t mean any harm when they held down patients, shoved their fingers and hands in their mouths and noses to quiet their cries and screams, rubbed and hit their breasts and genitals, and sexually “humped” them. They simply called it, “work fun, or to get a good laugh.”
Nursing home advocate Wes Bledsoe wants the federal government to change the way it rates nursing homes on its Web site Medicare. gov, to accurately reflect the quality of care at nursing homes, according to the Albert Lea Tribune.
Hidden video surveillance has led to formal charges of abuse and neglect of two nursing home employees in Kentucky, according to Kentucky.com. A grand jury indicted Amanda Sallee of Richmond on a charge of wanton abuse and neglect of an adult, a felony, and Valerie Lamb with reckless abuse and neglect of an adult, a misdemeanor. Both were nursing aides at Madison Manor nursing home.
Silver Lake Care Center of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, voluntarily closed its doors earlier this month after mounting complaints of physical and verbal abuse, financial woes, unresolved staffing issues, and numerous lawsuits alleging neglect and wrongful death, according to the News Examiner-Enterprise.
The son and daughter of a 46-year-old woman are suing the Knoxville, Tennessee, nursing home where their mother lived, for $7 million in compensation and $28 million in punitive damages for nursing home neglect that resulted in the death of their mother, according to Knox News.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of a class of thousands of residents at 27 Colorado nursing homes operated by SavaSeniorCare claims that state officials allowed the nursing homes to operate without insurance in violation of state law, leaving residents without means to sue when they are abused and neglected, according to the Denver Post.
The 87-year-old nursing home resident likely meant no harm. He suffers from dementia and wouldn’t give a belt used to assist residents with walking back to certified nursing assistant Sharoia D. Hill. But Hill became frustrated with his aggressive behavior. She decided to remedy the situation by hitting the frail man with a closed fist. Now the 28-year-old nursing aide faces up to five years in prison on a Class 3 felony charge, according to The News-Gazette.
