The Associated Press is reporting the family of a 69 year-old nursing home resident filed a lawsuit against a nursing home for failing to protect her from a 21 year-old mentally ill (bi-polar) resident. The lawsuit alleges the 21 year-old displayed aggressive sexual frustration and was a convicted felon. The sexual frustration “diagnosis” appeared in an Illinois state report, meaning it was documented.
David’s Comments: You prove liability (i.e. proving fault) for a resident-on-resident sexual assault by establishing the admission and retention criteria for the assailant indicate he should not have been admitted or kept at the nursing home. You then combine that with inadequate staffing which led to a failure to supervise the assailant, especially knowing the risks from the state report. Said another way, the nursing home had prior notice of the assailant’s tendencies and failed to act to protect the other residents from him. The nursing home’s duty to protect its residents is heightened by the fact many residents suffer from dementia and are incapable of reporting the assaults and much less protect themselves from a 21 year-old aggressor. The question every juror is going to be thinking is why did the nursing home put a 21 year-old male among its elderly residents? The attorney handling the case will need to explore the nursing home’s profit motive to see if they were thinking about profits over people.
The United States General Accounting Office (GAO) investigated sexual abuse in its 2002 report entitled “Nursing Homes - More Can Be Done to Protect Residents from Abuse.” The GAO studied nursing homes in three states, including Georgia. The concluded sexual abuse was “significant” but under-reported.