Hidden danger: Registered sex offenders often go undetected in care homes – TribLIVE

Photo illustration: Shane Dunlap | Tribune-Review

Story by DEB ERDLEY and

NATASHA LINDSTROM

Tribune-Review

Dec. 30, 2021

It was just a few days past Christmas 2020 when a 57-year-old woman with advanced dementia and a penchant for wandering the hallways stumbled into Richard Marlin Walter’s room at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center.

Frail, confused and robbed of her ability to speak, she couldn’t scream for help when Walter pulled her close and began to sexually assault her, records show.

A nurse making her afternoon rounds saw what was happening and grabbed the patient from Walter, who initially claimed the woman “wanted him to do that” but later confessed to a psychiatrist and was charged with sexual and indecent assault by Brighton Township police, according to a criminal complaint.

For Walter, who died at the state prison in Greene County on Nov. 7, it was not a first. At 63, his checkered criminal past spanned nearly four decades.

In 1985, he was charged with sexually assaulting and threatening to kill a 43-year-old patient while working as an aide at a state hospital for the mentally disabled in Union County, landing him for life on Pennsylvania’s Megan’s Law registry of sexual offenders, records show.

Later, there were other arrests, including one for stalking a woman in Snyder County, relentlessly following her to and from her workplace, police records in multiple counties show.

When age and illness took its toll, Walter was moved from a halfway house to the Beaver County nursing home, where he lived for three months among patients unaware of his record — a veil of secrecy that continued even after his arrest.

A Tribune-Review investigation showed that in the fall of 2021 Walter was one of seven registered sex offenders ranging in age from 36 to 87 living at Brighton and one of 68 living in nursing, personal care and assisted-living homes in Western Pennsylvania, often unbeknownst to patients, their families and even staff.

Across the nation, many of these offenders have found new victims among the ailing, vulnerable residents of these facilities, a trend experts fear will escalate as more of the roughly 900,000 offenders on U.S. sex registries grow older and require increased medical care.

“You’re putting felons into nursing homes and memory care units — the most vulnerable populations,” said Wes Bledsoe, a nationally recognized elder care advocate. “There’s the church lady, your former kindergarten teacher (and) your veteran that are being physically and sexually assaulted by these offenders, and no one cares.”

Richard Marlin Walter. (Pennsylvania Department of Corrections)

The Tribune-Review investigation found:

• There are no state laws requiring notification of patients, their families or staff when a convicted sex offender moves to a care facility, a gap that experts contend exposes anyone living or working in the facilities to untold dangers.

• Pennsylvania lags far behind other states, such as California, Illinois, Louisiana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Oklahoma, that have taken the lead in revising laws regarding notification about sex offenders moving to care facilities.

• Keeping tabs on how many of sex offenders are living in these facilities statewide does not appear to be a priority. Officials from the state Department of Health, overseeing Pennsylvania’s 688 nursing homes; the Department of Human Services, regulating 1,200 personal care and assisted-living facilities; and the Department of Corrections, supervising the parole of inmates from prisons to halfway houses and other facilities, said they have no idea how many sex offenders are living in these facilities or the locations of the homes where they are residing because no one tracks it.

• In the same vein, no one can offer specifics about how many assaults by sex offenders occur in the facilities because there is no statewide or national monitoring, but news accounts point to cases occurring throughout the nation.

• Some of the facilities accepting the largest number of sex offenders also have the worst health and safety records with the government agencies overseeing them, state and federal records show.

• As part of a pattern playing out across the nation, sexual assaults in these facilities are sometimes not reported, and when they are, information often is not released to the public, experts say. When contacted by the Tribune-Review, even Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier said he had no knowledge of the assault at Brighton Rehabilitation, despite Walter being prosecuted by his staff. He later acknowledged his office was handling the case but would not comment.

• A review of cases across the country shows that families sometimes are the last to know when an assault occurs. Not even the victim’s son — her legal guardian — was told the details of the assault on his mother at Brighton or about Walter’s arrest, a violation of state law, according to legal experts. He learned that information only after being contacted by a Tribune-Review reporter.

At just 26, Nicholas Cipriano has spent the last nine years watching frontotemporal dementia take all that was precious from his mother.

“She had a good job and a was a good mother” before spiraling into the haze of the disease in her 40s, he said.

She had a master’s degree and dedicated her life to working with mentally disabled children while raising Cipriano and his sister, her son said.

Then her behavior changed.

Patients with this type of dementia — the most common for those under 60 — display indifference and inappropriate behavior as the nerve cells in their brains lose the ability to function.

Today, she no longer speaks, and her thoughts and actions are muddled, Cipriano said.

In late 2015, with his mother’s finances depleted and the family no longer able to manage her care, there were few options. Cipriano, who holds his mother’s power of attorney, said Brighton was one of the few facilities that would accept her.

His primary concerns were about the type of medical care his mother would receive and ensuring her safety as the dementia took control of her thoughts and actions. Checking the Megan’s Law registry to determine whether sex offenders lived there never crossed his mind.

And he didn’t think much of the vague call he received one day telling him “there was some touching” involving his mother that “had been handled.” There were no details, no mention that police were called or that Richard Marlin Walter was arrested.

At first glance, Cipriano said the call was much like others he received from time to time informing him that his mother had fallen or bruised herself in minor incidents at the nursing home, calls that are mandated by state law.

After being told the details of the assault by a Tribune-Review reporter, a stunned and shaken Cipriano responded, “I don’t know what to make of this.”

The Tribune-Review does not identify the victims of sexual assault cases. In this case, the victim has a different last name than her son.

Brighton Rehabilitation administrator David Ferraro declined requests to be interviewed for this story.

It was during a routine review of state reports about health and safety in the state’s nursing homes that Tribune-Review reporters noticed citations for Brighton’s failure to protect patients from Walter.

Digging further, reporters found reports indicating Brighton had been fined $186,375 by federal regulators who cited the state’s findings regarding Walter.

Revelations about offenders living at Brighton, the regulators’ findings and the fine took many with close ties to the facility by surprise.

Even members of the nursing staff, many claiming they were warned by company officials to not speak to the media during the pandemic, said they had no idea Walter and other sex offenders were living at Brighton.

A review of state inspection records showed a parole officer informed Brighton management about Walter’s past, but that the information never made it to Walter’s clinical record, leaving those treating him in the dark.

One employee, speaking on the condition that her name not be used, said she is angry about not being given this information, an omission she believes left her and her patients at risk.

“I never heard anything about (Walter’s record). I know that none of us did,” the longtime aide said.

She also was not aware that a half-dozen other residents — four men and two women — at the 589-bed facility had records for crimes ranging from gross sexual misconduct to indecent assault on a minor, facts revealed by a review of their individual case files on the state’s Megan’s Law registry.

“To me, it’s so disgusting,” said Jodi Gill, an Ambridge attorney whose father, Glenn Gill, 83, has advanced dementia and has lived at Brighton since September 2019. “I think everybody who was involved should lose their license.”

Jodi Gill visits her father, Glenn, a resident of the dementia unit at Brighton Rehab, as often as she can. (Deb Erdley | Tribune-Review)

Gill said she was appalled to learn not only that a sexual assault occurred, but also that the victim’s son was never given the details.

“You can’t protect everyone. However, they (Brighton Rehab’s leaders) lie, intentionally misrepresent and refuse to accept responsibility for any of their faults — to the detriment and safety of all residents, and even the workers,” said Gill, one of more than 20 patients’ family members suing Brighton over the its handling of one of the most deadly outbreaks of covid-19 when 83 patients and staff died and more than 500 were sickened in 2020.

There are no state laws requiring facilities to admit sex offenders, but all are required by law to keep residents and staff safe from abuse, including sexual and physical assaults, according to a review of state statutes.

When a sexually violent predator is admitted to a nursing home, “typically police provide a facility representative (usually an administrator) with a flyer, and the facility would need to post that within the home in a public place,” said state health department spokesman Mark O’Neill.

But experts say this is a recommendation, not a law.

O’Neill said the burden of learning this information falls to the patients and their families.

“It is not an expectation that every resident is individually notified as the information regarding the offender is publicly available on the website,” O’Neill said.

But ailing patients seldom have the ability to check websites prior to their admission, and many family members look at ratings and reviews but never think to match the address of the home with the addresses listed on the Megan’s Law database.

Even Pittsburgh attorney Bob Daley, who handles neglect and elder abuse cases, said it’s only been in recent years that sex offenders being housed in care facilities appeared on his radar.

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and only in the last five or six years that I’ve even heard about it,” Daley said. “I checked my elderly father into a personal care home and didn’t even think to check Megan’s List.”

Information about sex offenders in local facilities: To learn if a registered sex offender is living in a long-term care facility in your area, go to the Pa. Megan’s Law website. In most cases, you will have to search by the name of the municipality or county and have the address for the facility to complete this search.

The same goes for state Rep. Rob Matzie, who has been a caregiver for elderly parents.

Matzie, whose district includes Brighton, was stunned to learn the facility where his late father once lived houses sex offenders.

“If you take on somebody like that, you’ve got to appropriately care for him or her and you have to make the accommodation to deal with that person so that they’re don’t pose a danger to others — or just don’t take them,” Pittsburgh elder law attorney Peter Giglione said.

“If that means you have to keep them in one specific wing and you have three aides watching them constantly, then you do it. (Nursing home management’s) comeback is always, ‘Well, we can’t watch them one-on-one.’ Well then, you just don’t take them. It’s that simple.”

Jennifer Storm, a victims’ rights activist and former Pennsylvania Victim Advocate, said sex offenders are different from other criminals.

“With some crimes like murder or theft, offenders tend to age out, but not with sexual offenses,” she said.

Justice Department statistics show that even after 15 years, 24% of convicted sex offenders will commit another sex crime.

The failure to keep residents and staff safe has been costly for some facilities.

In Lancaster County, registered offender Glenn Hershey, 65, was convicted of sexually assaulting an 86-year-old Alzheimer’s patient in the middle of the night in her room. Earlier, Hershey was convicted of raping a woman from a Philadelphia escort service whom he tried to pay in Monopoly money, court records show. Today, he remains in the state prison in Somerset County.

The family of the elderly victim filed a lawsuit against the facility and in 2018 was given a record $7.5 million jury award that eventually was reduced to $6.75 million, court records show.

During the trial, jurors learned the staff at the nursing home was aware of Hershey’s rape conviction and knew of his proclivities and his prior advances on the elderly woman, but failed to protect her from him. At the time of the attack, he was living in the room next to the victim, records show.

During Hershey’s sentencing, a judge said Hershey had a “proven inability to control his sexual urges.”

Family members in that case did not return calls for comment, but Matthew Stone, the Philadelphia lawyer who represented them, said the case underscored the need for nursing homes to be vigilant when they admit sex offenders.

There probably should be separate facilities to treat such individuals, he said.

“These people on Megan’s List have problems, and when they get older, they have to have somewhere to go,” Stone said. “I think if there’s any lesson to be learned, it’s that nursing homes are entitled to mistakes. But when there are red flags and they bury their heads, that’s a problem.”

Experts point to huge financial incentives for facilities to admit sex offenders.

Administrators want to maximize income by operating at full capacity, regardless of whether the patients are paying out of pocket, with insurance or through public assistance such as Medicaid, those experts said.

Wes Bledsoe is a longtime advocate for nursing home residents who has helped spur legislation to better protect long-term care patients from harm. (Courtesy of Wes Bledsoe)

“All they want is a butt in the bed for the buck,” Bledsoe said. “It doesn’t matter whose butt — as long as they get the bucks.”

Although personal care and assisted-living homes do not provide intensive medical care, they do offer help with basic day-to-day tasks such as bathing and taking medications, but aren’t supported by Medicaid or insurance.

Some low-income residents pay for their care at these facilities with Supplemental Social Security Income payments, designed to help aged, blind and disabled people with little or no income.

Dennis DiBondo, director of the Kane Community Living Centers in Allegheny County, the region’s largest publicly operated network of four nursing homes in Glen Hazel, Scott, McKeesport and Ross, said his facilities don’t bar sex offenders, but they do review each applicant’s circumstances to ensure there is no threat to others.

Not everyone is accepted, he said.

The Kane facility at McKeesport currently houses one sex offender, records show.

Although dozens of facilities not currently housing offenders were contacted for this story, only a few responded.

John Dixon, CEO of Redstone Highlands, a network of facilities offering several levels of care throughout Westmoreland County, said his facility does background checks on anyone requesting admission.

“At one point we were asked to admit a person who had an offense against him, and we denied him admission,” he said.

Other organizations follow the same path.

“We evaluate each potential admission based on our ability to provide adequate care and are compliant with all regulatory guidelines and limitations,” said Gloria Kreps, spokeswoman for UPMC, which oversees 32 senior communities across Western Pennsylvania.

Zach Shamberg, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association, a trade group representing more than 200 for-profit nursing homes and another 200 assisted-living facilities and continuing-care communities, said the reason that offenders end up in nursing homes is simple.

“We don’t have facilities to support those people in other institutional settings, so nursing homes became holding facilities for individuals who didn’t fit in other places,” Shamberg said.

Shamberg and other experts say that if lawmakers fail to act, the problem will continue to escalate as the Megan’s Law registries mandated by a 1994 act of Congress continue to swell and the offenders on those lists continue to age.

“As a society, we need to look better at how we meet the needs of (offenders) without putting staff and residents in the facilities at risk,” said Lori Smetanka, executive director of the National Consumer Voice for Longterm Care.

Incidents across the nation

• A 59-year-old registered sex offender was accused of assaulting a patient with an intellectual disability at the Dallas nursing home where he also was a patient. The victim told police she was in a hallway in the middle of the night when the offender motioned for her to enter his room. Once there, he pinned her down and sexually assaulted her multiple times, police said. Although she broke free of his grasp, she was unable to leave the locked room for eight hours.

• A 62-year-old man who spent 20 years in prison for sexually abusing elderly and disabled women was accused of sexually assaulting a patient a month after he was admitted to a Buffalo facility. The man entered the woman’s room during the night, pulled off her blanket and began molesting her, police said.

• A convicted sex offender living in a New Jersey nursing home was accused of sexually assaulting a nonverbal man with cerebral palsy.

• A 50-year-old convicted rapist and registered sex offender was accused of attempting to assault a nurse at a Connecticut nursing home by locking her in his room and attempting to have her perform oral sex, according to reports. It was later revealed that the nursing home was not aware of the man’s past because state law did not require this type of notification.

• A 72-year-old lifetime registered sex offender in Iowa was charged in connection with a sexual assault on a mentally ill patient at a nursing facility where the offender was a patient. He later admitted to assaulting another woman at the same location, police said.

• In Ohio, a 48-year-old man pleaded guilty to raping an 85-year-old patient in the nursing home where they both lived. Nursing home officials had no knowledge of his previous conviction for attacking a 92-year-old woman at a Cleveland nursing home.

Source: Tribune-Review research and wire reports