Nursing Home Abuse is on the rise
Becoming a grandmother is a milestone many women relish. But most women don't become grandmothers the way an Illinois woman Hale-Crom did.
Her profoundly mentally and physically disabled daughter Amy Jo, 24, was raped in her Bloomingdale nursing home, where she shared a room with her twin. That rape resulted in the premature birth last July of the baby now living with Hale-Crom and her teenage daughter in their Rockford-area home.
Hopeful for a healthy child
The baby, whom Hale-Crom doesn't want named in the newspaper, recently turned 6 months old. Hale-Crom's biggest fear is that many of the same problems that plague her twin daughters -- the seizure disorder, the severe mental retardation and inability to walk or care for themselves -- also lurk in her grandchild.
It worries her that the baby isn't hitting certain developmental benchmarks, like being able to roll over or grip something in her small hands. She fears the seizures that jolt the infant awake, sometimes two or three times a night. She wonders how this child will fare after her mother spent the majority of her pregnancy on anti-convulsants and without any prenatal care.
"I just want her to grow up healthy, but we're so uncertain about her prognosis," Hale-Crom said. "I can deal with a little slow, a little behind. But if she's like her mom, she's going to have to go into a home. It's not fair to me. It's not fair to my 15-year-old. It's certainly not fair to this baby."
Home fined 'insulting' $10,000
Hale-Crom says she tried her best to take care of her brain-damaged twins, who require constant care. Working full time as a clerk at a local hospital left her exhausted. It didn't help that she was in a bad marriage. After 3-1/2 years, the challenges finally overwhelmed her. She put her daughters in a home for handicapped children. Shortly before their 14th birthdays, she moved them to Alden Village Health Facility, a 109-bed nursing home in Bloomingdale, Illinois.
"I put my trust in that home to take care of my children because I couldn't do it," Hale-Crom said. "That was a mistake."
Authorities say Amy Jo was raped by a nurse's aide at the Alden facility in late 2004. Soon after, she began throwing up frequently and putting weight on her slender 5-foot-2-inch frame, according to state Health Department documents. The documents say support staff had voiced suspicions that she might be pregnant -- one employee reported seeing the baby move in Amy Jo's abdomen in May -- but health care workers chalked up her condition to constipation and feeding-tube problems.
The pregnancy wasn't confirmed until Amy Jo was seven months along. That's when paramedics took her to the hospital on June 11, after the home reported complications with her feeding tube. Nearly five weeks later, Amy Jo delivered the baby by C-section.
The nursing home has been fine a mere $10,000 for the incident by the State of Illinois. They should be made to pay for the child's care, perhaps setting aside money or creating a funs for their negligence.
Officials with Alden Management Services of Chicago, which runs several nursing homes in Illinois, are appealing the state's decision. An Alden spokeswoman declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Hale-Crom is suing the facility, as well as Amy Jo's nursing-home physician and Reynaldo Brucal Jr., the 18-year-old accused of raping her.
Brucal, who had no prior criminal record and had worked at Alden since September 2004, was charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault after tests matched his DNA to the baby. The Schaumburg teen has pleaded not guilty and is being held in the DuPage County Jail.
Disbelief is what Hale-Crom felt when Alden Village's administrator called with the news that her wheelchair-bound daughter, who has the mental functioning of a 7-month-old, was pregnant.
As time goes on, her wishes take a back seat to worries. Day care for the baby costs money, something that's in short supply when rent eats up nearly half of Hale-Crom's $1,154 monthly take-home pay. Debt drove the single mom to file for bankruptcy last year. She sleeps in an overstuffed armchair in her small living room. Her old bedroom became the nursery.
One of Hale-Crom's biggest worries isn't financial at all. It's emotional. She wonders how she'll be able to explain this to her granddaughter one day.
Just imagine what else is going behind closed doors. Physical restraints, little to no care for those in need and at the same time these facilities taking government money and people's life savings.
In this case the victims are young. How many other across the county who are elderly and either have no family or cannot speak or defend themselves are being abused by a system initially intended to make their last time on earth comfortable. We warehouse those who are too fragile and or at death's door.
Where's the justice in all of this? Someday each of us will be affected by this system in one way or another. If we don't start paying attention, it will be too, late.
Susan Murphy-Milano
