Sex offender found living at nursing home
June 22, 2007
Adapted from the Intelligencer
Aggressive behavior by a nursing home resident led to a startling discovery by police: the man is a high-risk sex offender.
The 47-year-old was arrested and accused of groping one resident of the nursing and rehabilitation center and threatening another who called him on it, police said.
It was only in investigating the incident that police realized the man, a six-month resident of the home, served a prison term after being convicted seven years ago of sexually assaulting a 38-year-old stranger.
He is classified as a level-three sex offender in the state where he was convicted, which means the state believes he poses a threat to public safety and has a high risk of re-offending.
The nursing center said he was admitted last year based on medical and financial need.
“We were unaware of any prior incidents involving this individual,” the administrator said in a prepared statement. “We immediately took action and reported this situation to the proper authorities when we were informed of it.”
He is charged with failing to comply with sex offender registry requirements, making terroristic threats and two counts of harassment.
He was arrested recently but the charges go back to March, when police were called to the nursing home for a sexual assault report, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the county district court.
A resident of the home told a police officer that she witnessed the man touch the breast of another woman, the officer wrote.
When the resident protested, the wheelchair-bound 47-year-old wheeled toward her at an “aggressive pace.”
“I'm going to crush you,” he told the woman, according to the affidavit.
In an interview with police, the man said he suffers from dementia that makes it hard for him to recall his actions. But he told the officer that he was a religious man who “would never do something like that.”
Nursing homes do not have any special screening requirements for sex offenders, a spokesman for a state health department said. |
