Grassley expresses concern about exploitation of nursing home residents

Grassley expresses concern about exploitation of nursing home residents

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Editor's note: This Shark equates legal entities as the Probate Court of Cook County to the monsters who harvest human body parts for sale.  This court "sentences" helpless adults to have their bodies and estates harvested by the "Nursing Home-Judicial Complex".  Lucius Verenus,  Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com         

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Staff photo/Joe Shearer

150820_NWS_Grassley-Carter-Lake1_jshearerWEB.jpg

Sen. Chuck Grassley speaks to employees during a tour of the Paxton & Vierling Steel facility in Carter Lake.

Posted: Friday, March 18, 2016 12:00 am

Grassley expresses concern about exploitation of nursing home residents By Tim Rohwer
trohwer@nonpareilonline.com nonpareilonline.com | 0 comments

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley said Wednesday he is seeking response by the U.S. Justice Department on what he called a new and disturbing trend against the elderly – the exploitation of nursing home residents on social media. “In several cases around the country, nursing home workers have been caught taking photos and videos of residents in vulnerable positions and posting them on social media outlets such as Snapchat,” Grassley said during his weekly chat with Iowa reporters. “The mocking posts are meant for the workers’ amusement, but the posts are degrading and horrifying. The residents are frail and incapable of fighting back against the abusive treatment.”

 

Screen Name or Email Now I remember!

       

Since much of nursing home care is paid through Medicaid, a federal-state program, and since nursing home inspection is a similar makeup, these facilities must adhere to state and federal health and safety standards, Grassley said. He has asked the U.S. attorney general’s office on what the Justice Department is doing to stop this exploitation.

“The Justice Department is the nation’s top law enforcement agency,” he said, “and its involvement in fighting this newly emerging crime is critical to prevention, prosecution and holding perpetrators accountable.”

Grassley has also asked the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for an updated account of its work on elder abuse, including social media exploitation, in an effort to “stop this abuse of our seniors.”

Keokuk woman arrested on elderly exploitation charge

Laura Hawkins

By THE HERALD-WHIG STAFF

Posted: Feb. 26, 2016 5:40 pm

KEOKUK, Iowa -- An Iowa woman was arrested Friday and charged with financial exploitation of the elderly after an investigation by Quincy police.

According to a Quincy Police Department news release, Laura Hawkins, 55, of Keokuk, was arrested in Keokuk. Police said they were notified by Sycamore Healthcare of a 77-year-old resident who was possibly being financially exploited by a family member who was acting as a power of attorney for the person. An investigation found that several thousand dollars allegedly had been misused. Hawkins was released on a notice to appear. Her first appearance in Adams County Circuit Court has not been scheduled.

The Keokuk Police Department assisted with the investigation.

In an Iowa courtroom, an astonishing case of sex and Alzheimer’s

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By Sarah Kaplan April 7

Iowa court hears motions ahead of Rayhons trial(1:18)

In late March, a county courtroom in Iowa heard motions ahead of the trial of Henry Rayhons, who is accused of having sex with his wife after Alzheimer’s left her incapable of giving consent. His trial was set to begin April 8. (KIMT)

They started flirting in choir, the vivacious retiree and the grandfatherly politician, both single after the deaths of their longtime spouses. Less than two years later, they were married in the church where they met, surrounded by a gaggle of children and grandchildren and hundreds of guests dancing the polka. It was an unexpected second chance at love for Donna Lou Young and Henry Rayhons, both past 70 at the time of their wedding.
“They were two good people who were good together,” the couple’s pastor recalled.
After a four-year battle with Alzheimer’s, Donna Lou Rayhons died in a nursing home in August, just four days shy of her 79th birthday. A week later, Henry Rayhons was arrested and charged with sexual abuse. State prosecutors accused him of having sex with his wife while she was incapacitated by dementia.
Rayhons’s trial, which begins Wednesday, is a rare and possibly unprecedented examination of a little-explored aspect of consent. While much of the discussion about rape these days swirls around the influence of drugs, alcohol and the culture on college campuses, the Rayhons case asks a much different question: When is a previously consenting spouse suffering from dementia no longer able to say yes to sex?
[100-year-old accused of killing sleeping wife with ax in gruesome murder-suicide]
Katherine C. Pearson, who teaches and writes about elder law at Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law, told Bloomberg News that this is the first case of its kind she’s seen in more than 20 years of working in the field.
“This is maybe the last great frontier of questions about capacity and dementia,” she said. “… Any partner in a marriage has the right to say no. What we haven’t completely understood is, as in this case, at what point in dementia do you lose the right to say yes?”
Friends and family say that Donna Lou and Henry Rayhons, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1997 until this year, were besotted with one another throughout their relationship. She often accompanied him to the state Capitol in Des Moines. He bought her dresses and acquired a bee suit so he could join her in her beekeeping.
“He treated her like a queen,” Charity McCauley Andeweg, who clerked for Rayhons, told Bloomberg.
[116-year-old Gertrude Weaver dies just five days after becoming the world’s oldest person]
But a few years into their marriage, Donna was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She suffered headaches and forgetfulness, drove on the wrong side of the road and once put a single sock into the dryer instead of a full load of laundry, according to Bloomberg.
In March of last year, Donna’s daughter Linda Dunshee took her mother out to lunch. Beneath her winter coat and blazer, Donna was wearing only a sleep teddy that left her breasts exposed. Later, Donna put her hands in the toilet bowl in the restaurant bathroom, Dunshee told a state investigator.
On March 29, Donna was moved to Concord Care Center in Garner, Iowa, a five-minute drive from her home with Rayhons. Rayhons reportedly resisted the move and clashed with Donna’s daughters — both from her first marriage — over how she should be cared for at the facility.
In May, Dunshee and Donna’s other daughter, Suzan Brunes, met with Concord staff and drew up a care plan for Donna, according to a state affidavit. At the meeting, the women and doctors concluded that Donna was no longer able to consent to sex, a fact Rayhons was informed of.
But a week later, on May 23, surveillance video showed Rayhons spending about 30 minutes in his wife’s room. When he left, he was holding her underwear, which he dropped into a laundry bag in the hallway.
Donna’s roommate told nursing home staff that Rayhons had come into the room and closed a privacy curtain around his wife’s bed. She then heard noises indicating that Rayhons was having sex with Donna, the affidavit said.
That night, Brunes took Donna to the hospital for a rape test, Bloomberg reported. Her underwear and bedding were sent to a crime lab for an examination.
Shortly after, a judge approved Brunes’s application to become her mother’s temporary guardian, which cited issues between Rayhons, Concord staff and Donna’s other family members. Around the same time, a state investigator showed up at Rayhons’s home to interview him about the alleged assault. In the interview, Rayhons admitted to having “sexual contact” with his wife on May 23, according to the state affidavit.
Donna died just two months later, and Rayhons was arrested a week after that. Shortly before the charges were filed, Rayhons withdrew from a race to serve a 10th term as state representative for Iowa’s 8th District.
Rayhons’s prominence in the area prompted the Iowa attorney general’s office to seek to move the trial out of Hancock County, where prosecutors argued they would not be able to find an impartial jury after the charges had been covered so extensively in local news. A judge denied the request.
Now, as the case heads to trial, prosecutors will have to convince the jury on two points: First, that Rayhons had sex with Donna while she was at Concord Care, and second, that Donna was not capable of consenting to it.
The state crime lab found semen stains on Donna’s quilt and sheet that matched Rayhons’s genetic profile, the Associated Press reported.
If Rayhons is proved to have had sex with Donna, Iowa sexual assault law is vague about how the case should be treated. The state outlawed non-consensual sex between a husband and wife 25 years ago, Elizabeth Barnhill, executive director of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, told the Iowa City Press Citizen. State law also defines sex with a person suffering from a “mental defect or incapacity” as sexual abuse but is not explicit about what is meant by the term “mental defect.”
Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s experts differ on whether the disease really does preclude people from being able to give consent. Elizabeth Edgerly, a clinical psychologist who serves as chief program officer for the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Association, told the AP it can be hard to determine capacity in cases of dementia.
“Is the person capable of saying no if they don’t want to do something? That’s one of the biggest pieces,” she said.
Edgerly added that physical closeness with loved ones can often be helpful to people with the disease.
According to Bloomberg, in the months after moving to Concord Care, Donna fared poorly on the Brief Interview for Mental Status, a cognitive test that measures dementia by asking patients a series of memory questions. On a May 13 test, just 10 days before the alleged assault, she got a score of zero on the BIMS test.
But Douglas Wornell, a Tacoma, Wash., geriatric psychiatrist and author of the book “Sexuality and Dementia,” told Bloomberg it was “naïve” to conclude that Donna’s memory loss indicates she was incapable to knowing whether she wanted to have sex, which is “along the order of knowing you want some food,” he said. 
A statement from Rayhons’s family released after criminal charges were filed against him dismisses the notion that any contact between Rayhons and his wife could be considered rape.
“Donna’s location did not change Dad’s love for Donna nor her love for him. It did not change their marriage relationship. And so he continued to have contact with his spouse in the nursing home; who among us would not?” it read. “… Accusing a spouse of a crime for continuing a relationship with his spouse in a nursing home seems to us to be incredibly illogical and unnatural, as well as incredibly hurtful.”

Scaled-back elder abuse legislation wins Iowa House committee approval

Editor's note: This Shark believes that placing a dollar value on punishment is prejudicial. I really means the poor receive less protection from the law than the rich. Bad planning IA legislators.  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com

 

Scaled-back elder abuse legislation wins Iowa House committee approval

Mar. 12, 2014   |  

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Iowa News / File Photo

Written by

Jason Noble

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A bill creating a new crime of financial exploitation of a vulnerable elder won committee approval in the Iowa House on Wednesday, keeping the issue alive for further discussion during the current legislative session.
Senate File 2239 makes financially exploiting vulnerable adults who are age 65 or older and unable to protect themselves a crime ranging from a simple misdemeanor up to a class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The penalty would depend on the dollar value of the exploitation.
The measure passed 21-0 in the House Judiciary Committee, clearing a procedural deadline and setting up debate on the House floor.
The bill represents the House version of a more expansive Senate package relating to elder abuse that also includes a state-sponsored referral and investigative services for individuals concerned about being victims of such abuse.
House Judiciary Chairman said the state services could not be funded in the coming year’s budget and that lawmakers should take a narrower approach this year.
“Let’s take a first step in addressing one of the serious problems of elder abuse in this state,” Baltimore said. “That’s financial exploitation.”
Should the bill win approval by the full House, lawmakers from both chambers will negotiate a compromise between the competing versions.

Spencer lawyer charged for allegedly overbilling Public Defenders Office

Editor's note: Overbilling is a "right of passage" in the Probate Court of Cook County.  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster,  ProbateSharks.com

 

Spencer lawyer charged for allegedly overbilling Public Defenders Office

October 15, 2013 By Dar Danielson

A state audit that found an attorney overbilled the state Public Defenders Office has now resulted in felony charges against the man. The Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation says arrest warrants have been issued for 60-year-old Ney Mcdaniel of Spencer, who worked on a contract basis in Clay County.
Mcdaniel is charged with ongoing criminal conduct, first-degree theft and first degree fraudulent practice. DCI Special Agent, Mitch Mortvedt, says Mcdaniel is not yet in custody. “We’re working to try and locate him — not that he’s running from us — I don’t want to give a misconception,” Mortvedt says.
He says it’s a matter of contacting Mcdaniel and arresting him. “We believe that he may possible be out of state — which we knew of ahead of time — and are working on that with his counsel,” Mortvedt says. The state audit released in July showed nearly $178,000 of improper payments to Mcdaniel. The audit said Mcdaniel submitted one claim for 80 days where he said he worked 24 hours or more in a single day. He submitted several other claims for hours worked — between August 31st of 2007 and March 31st of 2011.
Public Defender Sam Langholz released  a statement following the audit of Mcdaniel’s work that said the Mcdaniel case spawned an ongoing statewide review of the program and the contracts of four other attorneys have been terminated.

Judge bars note-taking during trial

Judge bars note-taking during trial He claims a reporter's pen and paper could sway jurors; others say the rule infringed constitutional rights By JARED STRONG Times Herald Staff Writer May 22, 2013 District Judge James Richardson forbade a Daily Times Herald reporter from taking notes at a vehicular homicide trial Tuesday in Audubon, a rare courtroom rule that some say is unconstitutional. Richardson said a reporter's scrawls could "influence the jury in that they might think something is important if they see me writing," reporter Jared Raney said. But Iowa reporters commonly take notes in courtrooms. "This is the first time I've heard of a judge prohibiting a journalist - or anyone else, for that matter - from taking notes with a pen and paper in the courtroom," said Kathleen Richardson, of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, which advocates for an open and transparent government. "There is a long-recognized legal right of the public to attend criminal proceedings and for the news media to cover them, as surrogates of the public. And it would be impossible for a journalist to accurately report on a trial without being able to take notes." Raney said judge Richardson told him to file an expanded media request - which is commonly required to use cameras, camcorders and other electronic devices in Iowa courtrooms - if Raney wanted to take notes on paper. Such requests often take more than a week to gain approval, which would likely happen after the Audubon trial concludes for Kendall Ware, 57, of Lineville, who is accused of killing a boy in a 2011 drunken-driving crash. Judges generally have the power to set their own courtroom rules, and Richardson could allow pen-and-paper reporting in his courtroom regardless of a formal expanded media request. Chief Judge Jeffrey Larson, who oversees Richardson's court district of nine western Iowa counties, said he tried twice Tuesday to persuade Richardson to reverse his rule about taking notes but was not successful. "I don't really agree with his position," Larson told the Times Herald. An Illinois judge enforced a similar courtroom rule until a federal judge questioned its constitutionality in 2006. "A sweeping prohibition of all note-taking by any outside party seems unlikely to withstand a challenge under the First Amendment," U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo wrote in February 2006. "A prohibition against note-taking is not supportive of the policy favoring informed public discussion; on the contrary it may foster errors in public perception." Raney and fellow Times Herald reporter Douglas Burns reported on Ware's trial Tuesday afternoon by intermittently leaving the courtroom to jot notes. Lawyers that represent the Iowa Newspaper Association and its member newspapers - which includes the Times Herald - asked Richardson to reconsider the rule this morning. Richardson initially put off the idea but later proposed a compromise in which reporters were allowed to take notes in the courtroom but were seated in an area where jurors could not easily see them. The dispute over Richardson's note-taking ban comes amid a bigger statewide discussion of what electronic devices reporters should be allowed to use in Iowa courtrooms. The Iowa Supreme Court appointed a committee late last year to study the issue, which has been brewing for years as reporters have expanded the electronic and Internet tools they use. Reporters in courtrooms have sent out live updates from major criminal trials over the Internet via Twitter, for example. The court rules that govern media access have not been updated for decades. Some district judges in Iowa allow reporters to use laptop computers and voice recorders to take notes in courtrooms without filing an expanded media request. Richardson was appointed a judge in 1986. He previously worked as city attorney for Audubon, Bayard and Coon Rapids. Reader Comments Posted: Thursday, May 23, 2013 Article comment by: sandra fish It's really disappointing to see something like this happen - and get national attention. As a former Times Herald reporter (in the olden days of the early 1980s), my experience with the court system there was that the role of the journalist was respected. How else does this judge expect the public to learn about what's happening at this trial? Must they wait to read court transcripts? Or does Judge Richardson believe the public has no right to know what takes place in his courtroom? Article Comment Submission Form Please feel free to submit your comments. 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