Boston Personal Injury Attorney Blog
All forms of sexual abuse are under-reported. However, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape involving nursing home residents is vastly under-reported and is far more pervasive than probably any of us realized before. That’s according to a new in-depth report by CNN Investigations. 
Chronicling disturbing and heartbreaking instances in great detail, the reporters sought to expose the failings of nursing home staffers, administrators, investigators, regulators and lawmakers in addressing this serious problem.
In general, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tallies all allegations of nursing home abuse – including those involving sex-related offenses – into a single category. At the request of CNN reporters, CMS conducted a specialized search using certain keywords that would help single out sex-related offenses. However, reporters still had to sift through each case because not all were relevant. That search revealed 226 facilities cited for failure to protect residents from sexual abuse between 2010 and 2015. Of those, only about 60 percent resulted in fines and only 16 were cut off from federal funding. However, an independent analysis by CNN reporters of the raw data showed that between 2013 and 2016, there were more than 1,000 nursing homes cited for mishandling or failing to prevent alleged cases of sexual abuse, sexual assault and rape at the facilities. About 100 of those centers were cited multiple times for these offenses. Continue reading
