Sexual Assault: Group Home Broke Its Own Rules 

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

April 1998

  Quick Summary: After problems with sexual abuse the nursing facility’s internal rules were changed to forbid male staff to work alone with vulnerable female residents.

  The facility let enforcement of its own rule lapse, and a resident was raped.

  Healthcare facilities are responsible for preventing harm that can be foreseen coming to vulnerable persons in their care.

  A facility for developmentally disabled adults must take steps to prevent them from being sexually assaulted by staff members.

  The facility acted properly, to a degree. The perpetrator had no criminal history. His prior employment references checked out.   He had not been inappropriate with vulnerable females.   SUPREME COURT OF WASHINGTON, 1997.

   As a general rule, a court will judge a healthcare facility negligent when a patient is harmed in a manner that is foreseeable.

   This rule can also be stated just the opposite, if a court believes justice will be served by refusing to hold a healthcare facility liable when what happened to a patient was truly unforeseeable.

   The Supreme Court of Washington had to decide a difficult case involving a civil lawsuit against a group home for developmentally disabled adults stemming from a female resident being raped by a male caregiver employed by the home.

   It was difficult because the home had investigated his background. He had no criminal record or prior history of abuse or sexually inappropriate conduct.

   However, the court said the attorneys for the resident could make out a case of foreseeability from the fact the home, after prior episodes not involving this staff member, had made a rule for the protection of vulnerable female residents that male staff categorically could not work alone.

   This male staff member was working alone when he became the perpetrator of a sexual assault. The group home apparently was neglecting its own policy on the subject, when this occurred. Niece v. Home, 929 P. 2d 420 (Wash., 1997).