XPost: talk.politics.guns, mn.politics, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: alt.abortion, sac.politics   
   From: nocommonsense@kamalaharris.com   
      
   "You prepare for a phone call your mother has passed.   
   You don't prepare for a phone call that your mother has been RAPED."   
      
   Some of the victims can't speak. They rely on walkers and wheelchairs to leave   
   their beds. They have been robbed of their memories. They come to nursing   
   homes to be cared for.   
      
   Instead, they are sexually assaulted.   
      
   The unthinkable is happening at facilities throughout the country: Vulnerable   
   seniors are being raped and sexually abused by the very people paid to care   
   for them.   
      
   It's impossible to know just how many victims are out there. But through an   
   exclusive analysis of state and federal data and interviews with experts,   
   regulators and the families of victims, CNN has found that this    
   ittle-discussed issue is more    
   widespread than anyone would imagine.   
      
   Even more disturbing: In many cases, nursing homes and the government   
   officials who oversee them are doing little -- or nothing -- to stop it.   
      
   Sometimes pure -- and even willful -- negligence is at work. In other   
   instances, nursing home employees and administrators are hamstrung in their   
   efforts to protect victims who can't remember exactly what happened to them or   
   even identify their    
   perpetrators.   
      
   In cases reviewed by CNN, victims and their families were failed at every   
   stage. Nursing homes were slow to investigate and report allegations because   
   of a reluctance to believe the accusations -- or a desire to hide them. Police   
   viewed the claims as    
   unlikely at the outset, dismissing potential victims because of failing   
   memories or jumbled allegations. And because of the high bar set for   
   substantiating abuse, state regulators failed to flag patterns of repeated   
   allegations against a single caregiver.   
      
   It's these systemic failures that make it especially hard for victims to get   
   justice -- and even easier for perpetrators to get away with their crimes.   
      
   "At 83 years old, unable to speak, unable to fight back, she was even more   
   vulnerable than she was as a little girl fleeing her homeland. In fact, she   
   was as vulnerable as an infant when she was raped. The dignity which she   
   always displayed during her    
   life, which was already being assaulted so unrelentingly by Alzheimer's   
   disease, was dealt a final devastating blow by this man. The horrific irony is   
   not lost upon me ... that the very thing she feared most as a young girl   
   fleeing her homeland happened    
   to her in the final, most vulnerable days of her life."   
      
   https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170221115822-sonja-fisher   
   collage-02-large-43.jpg   
   Sonja Fischer is shown here in earlier days. She is pictured at top of this   
   story during the last years of her life, with her daughter Maya's haunting   
   quote.   
      
   Maya Fischer made this statement in court at the 2015 sentencing of a nursing   
   assistant convicted of raping her mother. Choking back tears, Fischer detailed   
   her mother's story -- recounting how she had fled Indonesia as a youth with   
   her family to escape    
   the rape and killing of young girls by Japanese soldiers, only to fall victim   
   decades later to a man whose job was to care for her.   
      
   A fellow caregiver saw male nursing assistant George Kpingbah in 83-year-old   
   Sonja Fischer's room at 4:30 a.m. on December 18, 2014, at the Walker   
   Methodist Health Center in Minneapolis. A bare leg was on each side of his   
   hips, and her adult diaper lay    
   open on the bed. When the witness noticed the 76-year-old aide thrusting back   
   and forth, she said she knew a sexual assault was occurring.   
      
   Kpingbah ultimately pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct   
   with a mentally impaired or helpless victim and was sentenced to eight years   
   in prison. In an emotional statement directed at Kpingbah during sentencing,   
   the judge told him he had    
   done more than ravage the lives of his victim and her family. He had betrayed   
   the public trust granted to caregivers who have such intimate access to the   
   sick and elderly.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)