Safety in nursing homes

Most of the time, families place elderly relatives in nursing homes (or in long term care and assisted living facilities) to make sure they are cared for and safe. This is not always a correct assumption: they may be living with a registered sex offender, or someone with a history of violence, or a parolee.

A watchdog group says they have documented at least 1,600 registered sex offenders living at various facilities in the United States. The group spent the last four years taking names from sex offender registries and matching their addresses with care facilities’ addresses given in a Medicare database.

The 1,600 figure is probably an underestimate, since non-registered offenders (who are high-risk individuals), parolees, and unreported assaults that occur inside nursing homes and related facilities are not in the report.

Many of the 1,600 identified sex offenders are young adults, who usually are sent to these facilities because they have behavioral problems or physical disabilities. But there are also unlikely elderly sexual offenders.

The group has also tracked murders, assaults, and more than 60 cases of rape committed in nursing homes and similar facilities.

The head of the watchdog group, A Perfect Cause, and several other resource persons presented testimony at a U.S. House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight hearing on the matter. The hearing intends to investigate the scope of the problem and how the federal government can help eliminate it.

Another witness at the hearing was a 60-year-old woman whose mother, who was 77 years old at the time, was raped by an 83-year-old man, a repeat sex offender with a record of 58 arrests. The man was caught in the act by a nurse and staff of the nursing home. Physical evidence was present, but the man was considered incompetent to stand trial and was simply relocated to another nursing home.

Also giving testimony at the hearing was a Pennsylvania lawyer, who described the case of an 86-year-old woman in 2002 who was raped by a 31-year-old resident. The young man had a record of three convictions, eight prior arrests and two adult commitments to correctional facilities before he was sent to the home.

There is no federal or state law that bars sexual offenders or violent persons from becoming residents of long-term care facilities. Such people are placed in these facilities by judges, county sheriffs, and corrections workers; offenders and their families may also make that decision.

The witnesses at the Congressional hearing said that they do recognize the right of offenders to receive care, but no one should forget that seniors are entitled to protection.

Proposed solutions from the watchdog group, A Perfect Cause, include:

* Separate and secure facilities be established to serve the needs of violent and sexual offenders

* Nursing homes be required to conduct criminal background checks and to deny admission to any person with a history of violent crimes or sexual offenses

Oklahoma passed legislation in May authorizing the establishment of separate nursing home facilities for registered sex offenders. No other state has taken similar moves.