Nursing Home Abuse: Texas Staff Member Caught Sexually Assaulting Resident

Last Thursday, a Cedar Hill, Texas, nursing home staff member was allegedly caught half-naked, with his pants off, in a 76-year-old female resident’s bed. The female resident, police say, has limited mental capabilities.

New York Daily News reports that Ryan Otey, 27, a staff member of the Crescent Place Assisted Living Center, located at 224 W Pleasant Run Rd., climbed into bed with the elderly resident and took his pants off. A co-worker spotted Otey and immediately called the Cedar Hill Police Department.

When police arrived at the nursing home, Otey went willingly with them to the police station, where he “provided a statement detailing his activities with the resident.” Subsequently, he was arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault. He was transferred to the Dallas County Jail, where he remains on a $100,000 bail.

Court records indicate that Otey was arrested previously on a shoplifting charge in 2014, after removing price tags from a shirt in Walmart, and failing to scan them. Investigators are currently working with co-workers and other residents of the nursing home to determine if Otey performed criminal sexual acts on anyone else.

Family members of the 76-year-old victim were notified. So far, however, there is no indication as to whether the resident will continue to live at Crescent Place.

A 2014 health inspection indicates that the nursing home received a deficiency in several health scores, after inspectors determined that some residents were subjected to:

• Failure to provide care to each resident that maintains their dignity and respect.
• Failure to provide each resident with choices of appropriate activities.
• Failure to provide residents with their choice of activities, schedules, and health care plans.
• Failure to keep medication errors to less than five percent.

Nursing quality, however, according to the report, received a sterling rating of five stars, the highest grade a nursing home can receive. Quality measures at Crescent Place, which indicates the percentage of residents who received proper healthcare, also received five stars.

Meanwhile, nursing home abuse continues to remain a problem in the United States. The National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA) indicates that lack of training in detecting abuse is one of the primary reasons that so many of the nation’s elderly people are suffering

Although Otey was caught by a co-worker, statistics indicate that thousands of cases of nursing home abuse go undetected and unreported each year. However, nursing home abuse and elderly abuse is typically more common among the victim’s own family members, including children, spouses, or others.

[Photo Courtesy of Dallas County Sheriff’s Department]