-: Harvey & Foote Law Firm handles cases
involving sexual abuse and physical abuse
of residents in facilities.
It's unfortunately something that is relatively common
but often is under reported
and not necessarily known about
in the way that it should be.
-: A lot of our cases also deal with physical abuse,
resident to resident,
or we've had cases where an employee to a resident,
as well as sexual abuse by another resident
or by another employee.
At first blush, you might think,
oh, that is one specific employee doing something bad.
But usually when you look more into the cases,
it's a facility
that didn't do their proper background checks.
-: Many of these cases deal with very sensitive topics,
and so they do not get reported or investigated
as much as they should be.
Many times also, the nursing home is very concerned
about being criminally liable
for its misconduct in these circumstances,
and so they do not always share their suspicions
of physical or sexual abuse
with a resident's family members.
Sometimes it can be difficult to prove
that your loved one was physically or sexually assaulted,
especially if you don't learn about it
until long after the fact of the assault.
We look to the medical records themselves.
Typically, those are very good sources
of objective information
which will be able to let us know
about the injuries that the person sustained,
and also any sort of immediate changes in their behavior
which might be attributable to having been assaulted.
Family members often feel some degree of guilt
that this is a facility where they trusted
that their loved one is going to be kept safe,
and instead, there's been this giant breach of trust
and this type of horrific incident has occurred.
But the reality is that nursing homes exist
to provide a service,
so while I understand that there is often a degree of guilt
associated with these types of claims,
I don't think that it's a necessary component,
because you should be allowed to trust them
when they say they're gonna do their job.
(gentle music)