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Less than one month after a convicted sex offender was committed to a nursing home, he began sexually assaulting fellow residents. According to a report in the Des Moines Register, state officials claim that medical experts did not consider 83-year-old William Cubbage to be sexual predator when they recommended moving him to the Pomeroy Care Center.

Yet since he moved into the nursing home facility, Cubbage—who previously had been convicted of sexual assault against both child and adult victims, including several young family members—has been accused of at least three separate sexual assaults involving different victims.

Our San Diego elder abuse lawyers know that sexual abuse can cause life-long trauma for victims and their families. In this case, it is particularly troubling that a convicted sex offender who still showed signs of sexual aggressive was placed in a facility where he could easily prey on vulnerable residents. Cubbage was committed to the nursing home by a judge against the advice of two state psychological examiners. elder_abuse%20%284%20hands%29.jpg

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Southern California elder abuse occurs with surprising frequency, affecting thousands of area seniors. Unfortunately, in many ways it remains a hidden problem because most cases of elder abuse and neglect are never reported and wrongdoers are rarely held accountable for their conduct. This sad reality was brought home in an SF Weekly post on Monday which explained how fewer than one in one hundred cases of elder abuse ever result in a criminal conviction.

A comprehensive report conducted by the area police department uncovered the infrequency of punishments for elder abusers. The data mirrors similar research by state agencies which also highlighted the infrequency with which this conduct is ever brought to light. For example, the state’s Department on the Status of Women found that only one in five cases of California elder neglect are even reported to authorities.

Elder care advocates explain that many seniors do not report mistreatment because of what they call the “fatigue factor”—where seniors are reluctant to engage in a legal battle following poor care. In the nursing home context, unfamiliarity with their rights is also a factor in the underreporting of neglect. Many vulnerable residents of long-term care facilities are unaware of the level of care to which they should be entitled. Therefore, if a nursing home employee fails to provide them with the assistance they need many seniors are unlikely to share the situation with concerned friends or family members. Similarly, most nursing home residents are not familiar with more nuanced forms of nursing home neglect, such as the failure to properly supervise residents or allowing resident-on-resident attacks.

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USA Today has analyzed nursing home rankings under Medicare criteria and found that lowest scoring nursing homes tend to stay that way, year after year. Sadly, many of these poor performing nursing homes are the only nursing facilities for miles.

According to this article, twenty percent of the country’s 15,700 nursing homes receive consistently poor ratings for the care they provide. With over 250,000 Americans living in skilled nursing facilities, that represents a huge number of vulnerable nursing home patients who are exposed to abuse or neglect every day.

“We want to see improvements, but we don’t expect a nursing home will jump to a five-star rating within a one-year time period,” said Medicare’s Thomas Hamilton.

Elder abuse or neglect in the nursing home is a fear many elderly Americans face. A case unfolding in Illinois is about as bad as it gets.

According to a report from the states Department of Public Health, several suspicious deaths at the Lake of the Hills nursing home may have been the result of a nurse deliberately overdosing troublesome patients. A year-long investigation into the deaths revealed that nurse Marty Himebaugh boasted to coworkers that she gave patients she felt were difficult or had “lived long enough” a drug cocktail that contained morphine sulfate, now suspected as the cause of several deaths.

I one particularly horrible finding, the nurse was reported as telling a coworker that, “those people aren’t meant to live that long,” referring to an adult resident who suffered from Downs syndrome, “they are meant to die in their teens and I’m going to help him along.”

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