Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In a videotaped deathbed interview, Helen Love sat with a metal band pinned to her skull and described a beating she said was delivered by a caretaker at her Sacramento, Calif., nursing home after she soiled herself.
"He started beating me all along the bed," the elderly women said in slurred voice as she described the attacks to lawyers. "He choked me and he went and broke my neck. He broke my wrist bones, my hand. He put his hand over my mouth."
Love died two days later from the trauma. The nursing home worker eventually pleaded no contest in the 1998 attack and served just a year in prison.
An 18-month congressional investigation has concluded that many physical and sexual abuse cases in nursing homes are not treated the same way as similar crimes elsewhere.
Patients have been dragged down hallways, doused with ice water, sexually assaulted and beaten in their beds, yet few prosecutions or serious penalties have resulted, the investigation found.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging was to present its findings at a hearing today. The investigation showed nursing homes rarely call police for attacks that would bring an instant response if they occurred elsewhere.
"A crime is a crime whether in or outside of a nursing home, where residents should not spend their days living in fear," said Sen. John Breaux, D-La., the committee chairman.
Federal officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said there is no federal requirement that nursing homes call police when there is suspicion of a crime, but the agency is acting to speed notification.
The Senate committee planned to review cases that were not reported properly to police.
Helen Straukamp was knocked unconscious and bloodied by another resident at the Westpark Rehabilitation Center in Evansville, Ind., in September 1999. She died a month later. The home initially reported to a hospital that she had fallen, according a transfer record describing her condition.
The committee also intended to spotlight the case of a 37-year-old mentally disabled woman who gave birth in January 2001 at the Maitland Health Care facility in Maitland, Fla. The staff had not noticed she was pregnant.
When the woman and her child were sent to a hospital, police in Winter Park, Fla., said a nurse at the hospital notified officers. A staff member subsequently was charged with assault and is awaiting trial.
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