Woman in vegetative state for years gives birth
Possible sexual assault investigated at facility
A near-drowning had left the woman in a persistent vegetative state for nearly a decade. Awake but immobile, and apparently unaware, she received round-the-clock care in a room at a Phoenix Hacienda Healthcare facility.
A few days after Christmas, her caretakers were flummoxed when she went into labor.
“From what I’ve been told, she was moaning,” an unidentified source told Phoenix CBS affiliate KPHO-TV. “And they didn’t know what was wrong with her . ... None of the staff were aware that she was pregnant until she was pretty much giving birth.”
On Dec. 29, with help from one of the facility’s nurses, the patient gave birth to a healthy baby boy, KPHO reported.
The reported birth — and the sexual assault on a vulnerable individual likely to have preceded it — has cast a harsh glare on conditions at a nonprofit organization that bills itself as a leading provider of health care for Phoenix’s medically fragile.
A Phoenix police spokesman told The Washington Post that the department is investigating, but the spokesman did not release details about the case. A police report and recordings of 911 calls also were not available Saturday.
The woman’s identity hasn’t been reported, and it’s not known whether she has family or a guardian.
The institution has at least 74 patient beds, according to federal records, and cares for people who have a range of developmental conditions and cognitive abilities. Some patients have been there for decades, according to state records.
Hacienda Healthcare, which has 40 programs that serve more than 2,500 people a year in Arizona, according to its website, released statements vowing to determine what happened.
“As an organization, Hacienda Healthcare stands fully committed to getting to the truth of what, for us, represents an unprecedented matter,” David Leibowitz, spokesman for Hacienda Healthcare, said in a statement released to ABC News.
No one has been arrested, and it’s unclear whether police have identified a suspect. In Arizona, sexually assaulting a vulnerable adult is a felony.
The state Department of Economic Security dispatched a team to conduct health and safety checks at the facility, and the state Department of Health Services has beefed up safety measures: adding employees, increased monitoring and stronger security.
In 2013, the health services department found that a male employee at the facility had mistreated some patients by making sexually explicit remarks about them. In a report, investigators did not mention any instances of suspected physical abuse. The facility’s operators told the state that the male employee had been fired and new training on reporting patient abuse had been instituted. The state found that the facility “failed to ensure clients ... were treated with dignity.”
In 2017, state investigators cited the facility for not providing privacy to patients while they were naked and being showered. One patient complained that he felt uncomfortable when employees freely walked into the shower room while he was naked, according to a state report.
Information from The New York Times and The Associated Press was included in this story.