(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch and is unaltered.
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State allegedly rejected previous complaint about nursing home rape suspect [1]
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2024-01-24
An Iowa caregiver alleges state nursing home regulators declined to investigate her complaint last spring against a man now being investigated for the alleged rape of a nursing home resident.
The female caregiver was working at Friendship Home in Audubon last April when she allegedly filed a complaint with the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing about the behavior of a male coworker.
The woman – who filed similar complaints with management at the home and with city police – alleged her male colleague at Friendship Home had been making suggestive remarks to female coworkers, had sent them photos of himself masturbating, had recorded video of one worker as she provided care for a resident, and had invited some of his female colleagues out to his car where he kept a bottle of Seagram’s Crown Royal.
That same man is now a suspect in the alleged October 2023 rape of a resident at Correctionville Specialty Care. State records show the alleged victim in the Correctionville case told management at the home a 36-year-old male certified nursing assistant had sent her a video of himself masturbating. Later, she alleged, the man took her to his car in the facility’s parking lot, told her he was a musician, played some of his music to her, offered her a drink of Seagram’s Crown Royal from a bottle he kept in his car, and then forced her to have oral sex with him. According to state inspectors, the alleged rape victim is not cognitively impaired. No charges have been filed in the case.
After the woman reported the alleged rape, officials at Correctionville Specialty Care evicted the woman from the facility and dropped her off at a homeless shelter, according to state inspectors. The home’s parent company, Care Initiatives of West Des Moines, continued to provide work for the man in other Iowa nursing homes that it operates, inspectors found.
Audubon police have acknowledged that six months before the alleged rape, complaints they received of the man’s conduct at Friendship Home “fell off the radar” without being pursued.
According to the complainant, officials at the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals rejected her complaint about the man last April, allegedly telling her the issues she raised were best addressed by management at the home since they involved worker-to-worker conduct that had no actual or potential impact on residents.
When asked about that, DIAL spokeswoman Diane McCool said the agency “cannot comment on whether information was received regarding a particular individual.”
She added that an allegation of a worker making a video recording of another worker who is caring for a resident could amount to a violation of “resident rights and/or dependent adult abuse, and thus would not be rejected” on that basis.
After receiving that response from DIAL, the Iowa Capital Dispatch asked the complainant – who declined to be identified for this article – to contact DIAL again and ask for a status update on her April 2023 complaint.
The complainant said she did so on Monday of this week and spoke to a supervisor who reiterated that unless a resident was captured on screen in the video where care was being delivered, the complaint amounted to worker-to-worker conduct that DIAL could not investigate.
She said the DIAL supervisor also refused to provide her with a copy of her own complaint, which she had submitted on a web-based form.
The complainant has provided the Capital Dispatch with screenshots of the man’s text messages, which include two photos of a man’s genitals and two photos of a man holding a bottle of Crown Royal inside a vehicle. The complainant says that last spring, after she alerted the management at Friendship Home, the facility immediately terminated his employment.
The Capital Dispatch is not identifying the suspect because he has not been criminally charged. The suspect has not responded to numerous calls and text messages from the Capital Dispatch.
State records show the suspect was working for Pete Howe Sanitation in 2017 when he was fired for keeping a bottle of Crown Royal in his work vehicle. Several months later, in May 2018, he was certified as a nursing assistant and was cleared by the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services to work in care facilities.
His certification as a nursing assistant remains active, according to a public database maintained by DIAL. One week ago, that database showed the man was currently working as a CNA, but the database now indicates he is not currently employed.
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[1] Url:
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/01/24/state-allegedly-rejected-previous-complaint-about-nursing-home-rape-suspect/
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