Rape spurs questions about safeguards for vulnerable adults
November 12th, 2008From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
The rape of a woman with profound disabilities has highlighted troubling questions about the oversight exercised by Washington state over programs that provide home care to vulnerable adults. The rape was discovered when the woman miscarried; a DNA match pointed to a nursing assistant.
“I feel so betrayed,” said the woman’s mother. “I trusted them with my daughter. They made me guilty, too, because I could not protect her.”
“The obvious question is, if they don’t get pregnant, how do we know?” said Dick Sobsey, a Canadian expert on violence and disabilities. “Many of these cases are just never uncovered.”

