› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
Sexual abuse. It is one of the most unimaginable crimes against those who are dependent on others, but yet the reports keep coming.
This week in Framingham, Massachusetts, the Boston Herald reported that a former nursing home aide was charged with sexually molesting a 62-year-old woman at Sudbury Pines Extended Care who had recently suffered a stroke which had greatly limited her ability to speak.
Staff at the Fort Worth, Texas group nursing home run by Medical Case Management couldn’t tell Archie and Helene Kennon why their 27-year-old son Asher had burns down his neck and arm. And neither could Asher. The young man hadn’t spoken since he was a child. Searching for answers, the Kennon family called the police, according to CBS 11 TV.
Something seems amiss at Montrose Health Center in Iowa. Lora Washburn was following rules when she reported an incident of abuse she witnessed at the nursing home where she worked. But a few days later she was fired, according to The Des Moines Register and The Hawkeye.
Jenette Sloan went every day to the Williamsburg Village nursing home in Muncie, Indiana, to visit her 94-year-old mother, Verna Talbott. But one day in June 2007, Sloan was startled to see her mother drugged to unconsciousness with a red, swollen face, according to The Star Press. Sloan questioned nursing home employees but no one would tell her what had happened to her mother. Shortly after she left, one nurse called to tell her that they were sending Talbott to the hospital because she was hit by one of the certified nursing assistants (CNA).
Read the rest of this entry »
Brianna Marie Broitzman and Ashton Michelle Larson, the two nursing home aides facing misdemeanor charges in the Albert Lea “abuse-for-thrills” case that has garnered national media attention in recent months, will face a judge for the first time this week, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota Star Tribune/Associated Press. The women are not expected to enter pleas until a pretrial hearing scheduled for March 23.
Family members of victims abused in the highly publicized “abuse-for-thrills” case at an Albert Lea, Minnesota, nursing home have come together to form a support group where they can talk about their painful experience and seek the support of others, according to the Albert Lea Tribune. Called Families Against Nursing Home Abuse, the group has a long-term goal to prevent abuse of vulnerable adults.
Wes Bledsoe, the founder of the watchdog group A Perfect Cause, returns to Albert Lea, Minnesota, this week to meet again with families of victims allegedly abused during the widely publicized “attacks for thrills” incident at the Good Samaritan Society nursing home, according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota Star Tribune. While in town, Bledsoe also will attend the arraignments of two of the nurses charged with in the crimes.
Last week, when a nurse at Southtown Nursing Home in Bixby, Oklahoma, walked in on restorative aide Edward Lee Marshall giving a blind, physically and mentally handicapped patient a bath, she felt sure she had witnessed something inappropriate. It appeared Marshall was not bathing the patient, but masturbating him. She immediately contacted management, who called the police, according to The Tulsa World.
Canadian officials blame inadequate staff-to-patient ratios for overworking, under training and simply frustrating Nova Scotia nursing home staff members, causing them to be abusive to their patients, according to The Canadian Press. As a result, 30 incidents of physical, financial or emotional abuse by staff members were reported over a one-year period.
The physical and sexual “abuse-for-thrills” case at Good Samaritan Society nursing home in Albert Lea, Minn., was listed as “far and away the leading news story in the Albert Lea area for 2008,” by the Albert Lea Tribune.
