ANDOVER, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas assisted living facility is accused in a lawsuit of failing to vet staff and turning a blind eye while a woman with dementia was sexually assaulted.
The suit alleges that administrators at Mapleton Assisted Living facility waited six months to perform a background check on former employee 56-year-old Muhammad Akram charged with raping the woman, allowing him to work as a certified nursing assistant despite a sexual battery conviction and a 2008 decision by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts to restrict his solo contact with female patients following sexual misconduct allegations.
The suit said administrators also took steps to dissuade an investigation, including discouraging a sexual assault exam. No one from Mapleton returned a phone message seeking comment.
The woman died in August at the age of 68. Randall Rathbun, the Wichita attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the woman’s estate and her daughter, said there was no autopsy performed but said in the suit that a “contributing factor to her death was the brutal rape.”
The Associated Press is not naming the woman because she is a victim of sexual assault. The family is asking for $1.5 million including $750,000 in punitive damages.