Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
MOTHER: I think Jenny was 6, 7, 8 months old. I could see something wasn’t right, I knew
it. [When] she was 3 1/2 years old, I had her tested, and sure enough, they said something
wasn’t right. And they put her in a special school, and [she went] from special school
to special school, then to a group home.
RYAN: It turned out that Jennifer had severe mental retardation; she was also bipolar.
Her family moved her in and out of group homes in Northern California during her youth. In
2002, when she was 27, she ended up at a state-run institution for the disabled in Sonoma County,
California – in the middle of wine country. She was put in the Corcoran Unit, an all-female
wing on the east end of the facility. She lived at Corcoran almost full time, except
when her mother occasionally took her home on weekends. To protect the identity of Jennifer
and her family, a voice actor is reading her mother's statements.
MOTHER: She’d cry that she wanted to stay home. … "I don’t want to go back." I would
go every other week, pick her up bring her home. … I was doing that almost every other
week for four or five years; I never missed a day. I was a really hands-on mom. If I saw
a bruise, I would scream and yell.
RYAN: Jennifer often had bruises. Sometimes, the injuries were self-inflicted. Other times,
they were not.
MOTHER: On her arms, here, here, here, here, all over her body she had bruises and they
couldn’t explain the bruises. Finally, I agreed for in the morning to strip her and
search her for bruises and in the evenings to strip her and search her, because I wanted
to know what was causing these bruises. Since they didn’t seem to know what the problem
was, it was the staff’s word against Jenny’s.
RYAN: In 2006, the injuries became more alarming. She had bite marks breaking the skin and dark
bruises shaped like handprints across her ***.
MOTHER: One time, she caught somebody touching her, doing something. They opened a police
investigation and, of course, it’s her word against his. Nothing was done; that was it.
RYAN: The caretakers at Sonoma decided to separate Jennifer from other patients. She
didn't like physical contact and often flew into a rage when she was touched. She was
given her own room with an alarm on the door.
Then in the winter of 2006, Jennifer was switched to a new medication. The medical staff requested
that she stay in the facility for several months without going home – for observation.
The next summer, in July, her mother took her home again and noticed something was wrong.
MOTHER: I had her for a weekend here, and it was, like, Saturday, and she says, “Mom,
I have diarrhea.”
She kept waking me up. She [was going like] five times to the bathroom [at night]. I said,
“You know, Jenny, for someone who has been in the bathroom all night long you should
have had a [big] stomach” … and it hit me. Oh my God, I felt my stomach, my stomach
was soft, hers was … something was wrong, you know.
I thought she had a tumor, that she was sick!
I took her back Sunday afternoon and I told the staff, “I want her tested tomorrow morning,
Monday.”
Then they called me, I was at work, and they said, “Jenny is pregnant.” I mean, let
me tell you, oh, my world fell apart. I said, “What?” They said, “She’s pregnant.”
Tuesday morning, they did an ultrasound and they called me. She was 26 weeks pregnant.
Almost six months.
They had a big meeting with everybody there and I was like, “How did it happen?” Within
a week, the doctor that was there resigned; the [patient] rights advocate resigned. They
started disappearing like this within the first week.
She was seen by the Sonoma gynecologist in April and she didn’t know, and she gave
her a pap smear. She didn’t catch that she was – January, February, March, April – pregnant.
You give somebody a pap smear, you can’t tell that they are already three or four months
pregnant?
The sheriff, he came here, he did the DNA on my husband, my son and my son-in-law.
RYAN: Along with the county sheriff, the Sonoma center's internal police force – called
the Office of Protective Services – opened an investigation. But it was far too late
to gather any physical evidence of *** assault. The Office of Protective Services
declined to comment on Jennifer's case.
Jennifer's family worked with medical staff at UCSF. They determined the pregnancy occurred
between January 15 and February 15 of 2007. A Sonoma employee alerted her mother to records
showing Jennifer was only at the center during those weeks.
MOTHER: She called me and said, “Listen, you brought back Jenny on December 26 of 2006.
You didn’t get her back until February 23, 2007. You didn’t have Jenny.”
RYAN: It was clear to Jennifer's family that she became pregnant while living in the Corcoran
Unit. Most women in the unit were kept on birth control year-round to regulate their
cycles. At her mother's request, Jennifer was not on contraceptives. She believed Jennifer's
private room and extra security measures would keep her safe.
The alarm on Jennifer's door should have alerted staff to unauthorized entry – except that
door wasn't the only entry to the room. A side door to a shared bathroom provided easy,
and unsupervised, access. The bedroom on the other side of the shared bathroom was empty.
No one would know who came and went that way.
MOTHER: I mean, the alarm really had no use, really. It was just a show.
RYAN: Jennifer gave birth to a healthy baby boy in October of 2007.
That same month, the Office of Protective Services received an anonymous letter that
named a janitor at the Sonoma facility as the alleged ***; he left the country soon
after. The sheriff's department went in to collect DNA from caretakers and other staff.
MOTHER: They had three janitors. One of the janitors gave it to them, the other one refused,
the third fled to Mexico. They said it was a matter of family, I don’t know.
RYAN: The sheriff's department never tested the DNA samples. The Office of Protective
Services closed the case.
MOTHER: They did nothing. The thing that pisses me off is after she gave birth, they wouldn’t
let me take her home. They said, “Oh, your family is still accused.”
I said, “Listen to me, my family is not accused, the day it happened – here is the
report – it happened here. You actually have a *** here, who is raping people,
and you did nothing about it.” I told them, “Because you have all your clients on birth
control pills, you don’t know if they were *** or not.”
RYAN: Leslie Morrison is the lead investigator for Disability Rights California, which is
an advocacy group that has special powers to investigate misconduct and abuse of the
disabled in the state.
LESLIE: People with developmental disabilities are at greater risk of being sexually assaulted
and sexually abused than the non-disabled population. What we know about women with
developmental disabilities is that of those who have been sexually assaulted, 50 percent
of them will be victimized 10 or more times. Men are at less risk than women, but still
far greater risk than a non-disabled population.
There are problems with reporting. People with developmental disabilities may not recognize
that what has happened to them has been a *** assault. They might not know how to
report it.
Most people with developmental disabilities are assaulted by someone they know. It could
be the bus driver that takes them to or from the day program. It could be the housekeeping
staff that comes in. It could be the in-home support worker. So most of the assailants
are people they know, people who are involved with them related to their disability and
people that they trust.
Many victims that don't report say that they won't report because they have a fear of retaliation.
Imagine that you're living in an institution, and you've been victimized. You don't have
any means to leave the institution. You don't have access to a phone, you don't have family
to come and visit you. And you're going to tell someone that a staff member has victimized
you and that staff member is working the next shift.
RYAN: After Jennifer gave birth, her mother moved her from the Sonoma facility to her
own apartment, paid for by the state. The family settled a civil lawsuit with the state
for $100,000. The child – now 5 – is being raised by Jennifer's parents.
MOTHER: I don’t know how that kid came out healthy; that’s really a miracle. He's a
perfect kid. You should see him – he stops in the street and he spells any word he sees.
He knows all his alphabet, big letters, the little letters.
RYAN: Jennifer's case was never solved. And she's not the only one. At least eight women
living in the Corcoran Unit have shown signs of *** abuse or have accused caregivers
since 2009. Patients at all five state-run institutions for the disabled have accused
caretakers of molestation and *** 36 times during the past four years. Only one of these
accusations has resulted in arrest.
MOTHER: I feel bad for the people who have no one to fight for them. There are a lot
of them, they don’t have any family. I told them when we were [there], “You know, I
was a hands-on mom and I fought you for my daughter’s security, and I still wasn’t
able to protect her.” Who protects these people?