The Puzzle of Housing Aging Sex Offenders

6-1-17 National:

States are grappling with how to care for a growing population of registered offenders in long-term care facilities.

When state officials finally released William Cubbage from the Iowa Mental Health Institute in 2010, they predicted he was too sick to hurt anyone again. But the octogenarian only became an even more notorious sex offender.

Between 1987 and 2000, Cubbage was convicted in four separate cases of assault. Then, a year after his release, he molested a 95-year-old woman in a nursing home. Neither the home’s patients nor their families had been notified of his history. The woman’s relatives were unable to sue, when the Iowa Supreme Court ruled the state was not legally liable. The state took Cubbage back, and in 2016 he was in the news again for allegedly trying to grope a care worker during a bath.

Aging sex offender dies after latest charges dropped

5-15-17 Iowa:

INDEPENDENCE – A man who was at the heart of the issues over caring for aging sex offenders has died.

William Russell Cubbage died Friday at the Mental Health Institute in Independence, according to Buchanan County Attorney Shawn Harden. He was 88.

Cubbage’s death came almost two weeks after a district court judge dropped criminal charges against him for allegedly grabbing a female MHI employee between the legs in January 2016.

In ruling issued May 2, Judge Brad Harris found that Cubbage was incompetent to stand trial on a charge of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse. There was also no substantial probability that Cubbage could be restored to competency within a reasonable amount of time, Harris’s ruling continued.

Should autistic man have to register as a sex offender?

4-29-17 Pennsylvania:

Brett Mika allegedly used his cell phone to solicit sex from a 15-year-old.

But the 32-year-old Bethlehem man is autistic and has the sexual awareness of a 12-year-old, according to his attorney.

If he's convicted and forced to register as a sex offender, he risks losing the insurance that helps him get sex offender treatment and faces big obstacles moving to a treatment facility when his parents can no longer care for him, attorney Rory Driscole said.

Northampton County Judge Stephen Baratta must decide whether Mika's special needs outweigh the need to protect the community.

UVA Law Professor Representing Buckingham Inmate in Federal Suit

3-29-17 Virginia:

BUCKINGHAM COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) - A University of Virginia School of Law professor is representing a prison inmate in his fight to receive medical treatment for a life-threatening disease.

George Rutherglen filed a federal lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Corrections and Buckingham Correctional Center on behalf of Elmo Reid.

The suit alleges the Buckingham Correctional Center denied 60-year-old Reid the latest form of treatment for Hepatitis C, which is a viral liver infection.

Rutherglen says this is a growing public health crisis.

“We're really facing an issue of whether the commonwealth of Virginia can afford the harsh sentences that have been imposed in the past and, I think, the alternative is either treat these people or send them out into the world on probation or parole,” Rutherglen explained.

A federal judge denied a request from the correctional center and its medical team to dismiss the lawsuit.

A trial is set for January 2018. ..Source.. by Matt Talhelm

Assault at nursing home raises questions about why sex offender was living there

3-21-17 New York:

Thomas Moore spent more than 20 years in prison for sexually abusing hospitalized women who were elderly, disabled or incapacitated.

But when time came to release him last year, state prison officials faced a problem. Indigent and with no family, the lifelong Queens resident had nowhere to go. Prison officials struggled to find a facility willing to accept the 62-year-old disabled sex offender. Indeed, Moore stayed at the Fishkill Correctional Facility three months longer than he was supposed to as the state shopped around his application.

Moore had no previous connection to Western New York, but late last year he was accepted at Waterfront Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Buffalo – where he lived surrounded by elderly, disabled and incapacitated women.

Barely a month after he moved into Waterfront, Moore was arrested and charged with sexually abusing a fellow resident in her bed.

"It was like throwing the fox in the hen house,” said Dr. Charles P. Ewing of the University at Buffalo, an attorney and forensic psychologist who has studied sex offenders and the law.

Authorities accused Moore of entering the room of another Waterfront resident at about midnight on Jan. 3, pulling off her blanket and molesting her. Police arrested Moore nine days later, charging him with sexual abuse of a person incapable of giving consent and with endangering the welfare of a physically disabled person.

Sick, dying and raped in America’s nursing homes – a CNN Investigation

2-22-17 National:

They go to nursing homes to be cared for. Instead, the unthinkable is happening at facilities across the country: Vulnerable seniors are being raped and sexually abused by the very people paid to care for them.

Senior Writers Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken provide a shocking and detailed account of the rape and sexual abuse occurring in nursing homes across the country — and the systemic failures of nursing homes and state regulators to stop it.

The graphic reports of abuse they uncovered are horrifying.

• 83-year-old Sonja Fischer fled war-time Indonesia as a young girl only to be raped by a nursing assistant during the “final, most vulnerable days of her life."
• An 88-year-old California woman only had sex with one man her entire life - her husband of nearly 70 years — then contracted a sexually transmitted disease from her alleged rapist.
• One elderly man with paralysis was sexually abused and forced to eat feces out of his adult diapers by a group of nursing aides.

As part of the five-month investigation, CNN Correspondent Ana Cabrera confronted multiple nursing homes where caregivers were accused of sexually assaulting multiple residents before eventually being convicted of rape.

Ellis and Hicken also read through thousands of government documents to conduct a detailed analysis of federal data - the first of its kind.

Some of the findings: CNN found that more than 1,000 nursing homes have been cited for mishandling or failing to investigate or prevent alleged cases of rape, sexual assault and abuse at their facilities between 2013 and 2016. Nearly 100 of these facilities have been cited multiple times during the same period. At least a quarter were allegedly perpetrated by aides, nurses and other staff members.

The reporters also traveled to the small town of Waynesville, North Carolina, to tell the story of one certified nursing assistant who worked at multiple facilities in the area and now stands accused of rape. This deeply reported account comes from police reports, court documents, interviews with the alleged victims and even the accused rapist, who denied the charges from jail.

Read the full investigation here. ..Source.. by CNN

States look for solutions to growing number of aging sex offenders

2-11-17 Ohio:

Balance sought between caring for those who need nursing help with protecting the public.

As states like Ohio deal with a growing number of aging registered sex offenders, another state is examining what to do with elderly sex offenders when they are in need of nursing home care.

In Iowa, lawmakers are studying whether to establish a separate facility for sex offenders to keep them away from other nursing home residents.

A Dayton Daily News examination found numerous examples of lax oversight of sex offenders in nursing homes in Ohio.

This newspaper’s investigation found 136 sex offenders were living in 43 nursing homes in Ohio in October. It also identified potential problems with the safety net, from under-staffing at homes with offenders to a lack of information on the public registry used by facilities to make admission decisions.

What You'll Lose When Obamacare Is Repealed

What about inmates who already signed up?

1-11-2017 National:

In 2017, more than 11 million people are projected to be covered by policies purchased through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and even those who have private insurance are benefiting from reforms put into place by the passage of Obamacare. Now, a Republican-controlled Congress plans to repeal the ACA as their first act back in session, and President-elect Donald Trump has agreed to sign whatever they send him.

But while “repeal and replace” is catchy and apparently wins elections, the GOP still hasn’t agreed on when each part of Obamacare’s repeal will go into effect, and whether they will include some popular reform planks when they introduce their own replacement plan. While Republicans are insistent that their own plan is in the works, nothing has been released to the public - despite the fact that they have voted repeatedly to repeal the ACA ever since they took the majority in the House in 2011. The delay is purposeful, since many aspects of the Affordable Care Act are extremely popular and constituents don’t want to see them disappear, especially with no replacement plan on the horizon.