Police investigating allegations of sex assault inside Apache Junction assisted living facility
Apache Junction police are investigating allegations of sexual assault inside Visions Assisted Living of Apache Junction. The alleged incident involves two memory care patients, one of whom suffers from severe dementia.
www.abc15.com
So this one is an interesting one, because both of the people involved are patients of the memory care unit of this particular assisted living facility. The woman involved has severe dementia and is non-verbal, so cannot consent to physical relationships and is known to be shy about having staff assist her with activities such as bathing, going to the bathroom, grooming and so on. The male patient involved has "some mental cognition issues," and mostly has the attitude more in line with a young child than a mature adult. The daughter of the female patient involved is blaming the staff for negligence in this instance and both patients were found alone in the male patient's room with the door locked from the inside. Both were found naked from the waste down, with the man standing over the woman in a sexually compromising position, to which the male patient said he was "just teasing" the female patient and that they did not have intercourse. He also claimed that the female patient was his girlfriend, in spite of the fact that the female patient suffers from severe dementia and is non-verbal.
Staff claim that this incident occurred directly after lunch, during a time at which most staff members are occupied with toileting tasks for patients, and so both patients were out of sight for roughly 10 minutes. The daughter of the female patient says she was the one who contacted authorities and that she was not contacted for almost 24 hours after the incident, while a statement released by the care facility claim that they alerted authorities as soon as they were alerted to the incident and then informed family members and had trained medical professionals examine the female patient. The male patient was moved to a separate building within the facility, while the female patient has now been moved to a separate assisted living community altogether. This was, apparently, the first incident of any kind for either patient, and both had been there for at least 3 years.
Facts of the article aside, this one has my blood boiling. I have a mother who I'm losing every day one piece at a time to dementia, so stories like this always hit me hard when I read them, but I also understand how people with dementia can act. So I completely understand the daughter's position here, and I completely 100% agree with her. In spite of being fully staffed and occupied with necessary tasks, there should never be a chance for patients to be unsupervised and alone unless they are asleep. I know that if I leave my mother alone for more than a few minutes she gets frantic and terrified, so the thought that people in the same position (IN A MEMORY CARE UNIT!) could be alone for upwards of 10 minutes or more...that's terrifying to me. They could think they're lost, they could start attacking other patients out of fear and not knowing what was going on, they could harm themselves, any number of things could have happened in that length of time. There needs to be either a staggering of these post-lunch duties so that someone is there to care for the patients while other staff handle the duties, or there needs to be an increase in the number of staff available. Also how in the holy hell could two people in a MEMORY CARE UNIT(!!!!) be in a room that could be locked from the inside?! Why would they be able to lock their doors from the inside?! I understand locking the facility doors and taking precautions with private offices and staff rooms, but patient rooms? Absolutely not! They're there because they have mental cognition issues that, yes range from the very mild, but scale right up to the absolute severe. Having doors that can be locked from the inside is asking for trouble, 100%. A right to privacy is one thing, a simple "patient in room, please knock" light or sign that goes on when staff press a button while escorting them to and from their rooms during the day would work to fix that problem, but locks...locks should be an absolute no for memory care units. Not so they can't feel secure, maybe put a mock lock on the door so they can feel like they've locked it, but it doesn't actually lock, but never ever let a person with severe mental cognition issues lock themselves in a room. That cannot and should never be ok.
This is why I can't see myself ever trusting a care facility to take care of my mother. I don't ever want to receive a phone call like that, that's my mother and I want nothing but the best for her...At any rate, horrific thing to have happen in a care facility, and something this particular facility needs to be seriously looked at to ensure it does not and can not happen again.
