For Star subscribers: Four years after a rape in an Arizona care facility, caregivers are still poorly trained. A public awareness campaign has not been launched. And families are begging for help.
“Oh, he had a laugh that was just contagious,” says his mother, Molly.
“He had to be diapered and dressed and bathed and someone to brush his teeth. He was total care. So it did require a lot of lifting and positioning, and the physical aspect, but it also required a lot of human compassion and a lot of emotional support for him and you know, stimulating his mind like, like the young adult that he was. It just required an awful lot.”“He would give us the opportunity to read his facial cues, like starting to pout or stiffen his arms and legs a little bit.
In that home, a caregiver hit him so hard in the chest he had to be hospitalized; he was sprayed in the mouth with a showerhead as a punishment. But years later, caregivers are still poorly trained and underpaid. One of the hallmarks of the task force, a public awareness campaign, has not been implemented. And families are begging for help.
In a yearlong investigation, the Arizona Daily Star and KJZZ analyzed 10,000 incident reports gathered by the state’s Division of Developmental Disabilities in 2019 and 2020. DDD is charged with providing care for more than 45,000 Arizonans who qualify for services. Among the reports were hundreds of allegations of sexual and physical abuse, and thousands of reports of neglect.
The Division is working to implement a pilot program that monitors group homes by Jan. 1, the statement said. In fact, advocates say the lack of transparency is one of the system’s biggest deficiencies, even four years after the rape at Hacienda. Members of independent oversight committees charged with protecting members of the IDD community say it takes months to get answers — if they get them at all.
The Division of Developmental Disabilities still offers no specific data about their inspections of group homes. According to the incident report, the man denied raping the woman. However, he said, he had been masturbating in her bathroom.
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