Officers responded to a call that an infant had "coded" and was "born having issues" How Police Learned Woman in Coma Had Given Birth: Baby Was Fighting for Life, Mom Was 'Helpless' For the first time since a patient in a vegetative state for more than a decade at an Arizona-based nursing facility gave birth on Dec. 29, the Phoenix Police Department has revealed new details about what led to a sexual assault investigation. During a press conference on Wednesday, Sgt. Tommy Thompson disclosed how authorities discovered that a 29-year-old Native American woman gave birth to a child at Hacienda HealthCare. Get push notifications with news, features and more. On the same day that the baby boy was born, officers responded to a call that an infant had “coded” and was in “distress” with troubles breathing. “The baby was born having issues, that was the nature of the call, that’s what started this on the 29th of December,” Thompson told reporters of how their investigation began. The mother, who has been in a vegetative state for more than a decade after a near-drowning, was “unable to move [and] unable to communicate, in other words, she was helpless and incapacitated,” according to Thompson. 10052873a Credit: Brian Skoloff/AP/Shutterstock “As far as I know it was a natural birth,” he said. When asked if the mother had a full-term pregnancy, Thompson said “[she] was quite a ways along.” hacienda-healthcare Credit: Google Maps Both the baby, who is now 11 days old, and his mother are currently recovering at a local hospital. “She was not in a position to give consent,” Thompson said of the mother, calling her a “helpless victim who was sexually assaulted.” On Tuesday, the woman’s family attorney, John Micheaels, said in a statement to PEOPLE, “The family would like me to convey that the baby boy has been born into a loving family and will be well cared for.” It is not yet known exactly where the baby is being raised or who he is being raised by. • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. Michealels also revealed the patient’s relatives are “outraged, traumatized and in shock by the abuse and neglect of their daughter at Hacienda Healthcare,” adding, “The family is well aware of the intense news and public interest in their daughter’s case, but at this time is not emotionally ready to make a public statement.” Police are seeking DNA samples from all male staffers at the facility in a push to identify the father of the baby boy, according to a Tuesday statement from Hacienda Healthcare obtained by PEOPLE. The statement said the company welcomed the move to investigate what it called “this deeply disturbing but unprecedented situation.” In the announcement, the company confirmed that Phoenix police had served a search warrant “to obtain DNA from male Hacienda HealthCare staffers.” “We had consulted attorneys to determine whether it would be legal for our company to compel our employees to undergo DNA testing conducted through Hacienda or for Hacienda to conduct voluntary genetic testing of staffers,” the statement said. “We were told it would be a violation of federal law in either instance.” Thompson revealed that police have obtained buccal swabs to collect DNA samples. “We’re looking first to find out who is responsible for this,” he said, adding that they are collecting swabs from a “very wide scope.” Thompson also confirmed that authorities and investigators are asking the public to help identify a suspect in the sexual assault case.<doc-sep>A woman who had been in a coma for more than a decade gave birth at a private nursing facility in Arizona last week, in a case that highlights a vulnerable population that advocates say have received far less attention in the #MeToo era: people with disabilities and in long-term care. The patient, whose age and identity has not been made public, was left in a persistent vegetative state after nearly drowning 14 years ago. She’s since depended on around-the-clock care at Hacienda Healthcare, a private facility based in Arizona that treats chronically ill and developmentally disabled patients. But the staff there were reportedly unaware that she was even pregnant until she went into labor on December 29 and gave birth to a healthy baby boy, according to KTVK, the CBS News affiliate that was the first news outlet to report the case Thursday. “From what I’ve been told she was moaning,” an unidentified whistleblower told KTVK. “And they didn’t know what was wrong with her.” The Phoenix Police Department has launched a sexual assault investigation into the case, and a Hacienda spokesperson said the facility has promised to get to the bottom of what they called “an unprecedented matter.” In the meantime, state regulators have demanded that the facility step up its safety measures, asking that male employees be accompanied by another person while treating female patients. While many crucial details remain unknown, news of the case was met with outrage online, with women’s advocates questioning why staffers reportedly remained unaware of the patient’s pregnancy for so long, and why authorities were treating it as a “possible sexual assault” rather than calling it outright rape. The patient had been in a vegetative state for more than a decade. She could not consent to any sexual contact or defend herself during an attack, nor did she have the power to report inappropriate behavior or assault. Patients like the one at Hacienda are particularly vulnerable Though the scope of the problem is hard to assess — research on abuse of patients living in long-term care facilities lags decades behind research for other populations — experts say those patients are particularly at risk of becoming victims of abuse or sexual violence because of how often they’re at the mercy of others to live their lives. “People who need total care are very, very vulnerable,” says Regan Smith, an ombudsman with Area Agency on Aging, based in Maricopa County, Arizona. “And nobody wants to believe that things are happening to them — they’re our most vulnerable population.” Some may have cognitive disabilities, while others may be tied to ventilators or feeding tubes, and require hands-on care around the clock. Patients unable to communicate obviously can’t give consent, while those who are physically incapacitated are unable to protect themselves from an attack. Add to those circumstances the fact that many patients are isolated from older support networks or their families, and experts say that can make patients easy targets. “Opportunistic assailants are common, and we see them show up in all kinds of environments where there are inherent vulnerabilities,” said Kristen Houser, spokesperson for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. According to Smith, instances of abuse as extreme as the Arizona case — in which a patient without the ability to consent to sex is impregnated while receiving around-the-clock care — are relatively rare within the industry of long-term care and nursing homes. But the circumstances aren’t unheard of: Over the last few decades, there have been several high-profile cases involving women who were impregnated against their will while they were in a coma. Less extreme cases are more common. There have been other complaints of sexual misconduct, for example, at the same Arizona facility where the latest pregnancy occurred. A 2013 complaint filed against the facility alleged that a male employee directed sexually explicit comments toward patients. In one instance detailed in a report from the Arizona Department of Health Services, the employee made explicit comments while bathing a patient, saying he was going to have a “happy morning” due to his semi-erect penis. The employee was eventually fired, and the facility’s operators promised the state it would implement new training on how to report patient abuse. But stories of abuse like that patient’s and others in long-term care facilities often don’t get as much attention as they deserve. Advocacy groups complain that studies on elder abuse lags “as much as two decades” behind similar research on child abuse and domestic violence. The scale of abuse complaints inside long-term care facilities is also largely obscured from the public eye. Federal agencies frequently catalog these complaints into overly broad categories, where data on “abuse” could be a catch-all for everything from neglect to sexual assault. A 2017 investigation by the Kansas City Star sorted through the data and found that sexual abuse allegations in long-term care facilities were on the rise nationwide. More than 20,000 complaints of sexual abuse were filed over the course of a 20-year period, the report found. But there’s reason to believe that at best, the statistics paint an incomplete picture of the scale of the problem. Assault allegations made by elderly or disabled victims are often met with skepticism or disbelief Rates of reporting sexual abuse or violence are already notoriously low nationwide — but advocates believe only a fraction of individuals who experience violence within a long-term facility come forward. By some estimates, only one in five do so. One of the primary concerns is whether victims who have physical or cognitive disabilities are believed if they do come forward, Smith says: “Do staff always believe what they hear from patients? If they can communicate at all, are they heard, are they listened to — is everything taken seriously?” Working against victims are false assumptions that the elderly or disabled could never be victims of abuse or sexual assault — people simply don’t want to believe that such vulnerable groups would be taken advantage of.<doc-sep>911 call: We had no idea she was pregnant (CNN) — Police investigators have begun to gather DNA from men who work at an Arizona care facility where a woman in a vegetative state gave birth last month. Phoenix police Sgt. Tommy Thompson said Wednesday the woman and child, who was in medical distress after being delivered December 29, remain in the hospital. CNN is not reporting the woman’s name because she is the victim of sexual abuse. Detectives have asked men at the Hacienda HealthCare facility in Phoenix to give buccal swabs, Thompson said. Investigators got court orders for those who didn’t voluntarily give samples. There is no suspect, Thompson said. “The family obviously is outraged, traumatized and in shock by the abuse and neglect of their daughter at Hacienda HealthCare,” the family’s attorney, John Micheaels said. “The family would like me to convey that the baby boy has been born into a loving family and will be well cared for.” Thompson said the sexual assault investigation will take some time. “We’re not going to point out who we’ve obtained DNA from or who we intend to get DNA from,” he said. “But suffice it to say, it is a large number of individuals. We have a very wide scope at this point.” Detectives also served a search warrant Tuesday to gather records relevant to the ongoing investigation, he said. Thompson would not say whether people who visited the facility have also given DNA samples. Woman is a member of Apache tribe The woman is a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and has long been in a vegetative state, the tribe’s chairman said Tuesday. San Carlos Apache Tribe chairman Terry Rambler called for justice. “When you have a loved one committed to palliative care, when they are most vulnerable and dependent upon others, you trust their caretakers,” he said Tuesday. “Sadly, one of her caretakers was not to be trusted and took advantage of her.” The woman has been a patient at the facility since 1992, according to court records. CNN affiliate KPHO/KTVK had earlier reported she had been at the facility for at least a decade following a near-drowning incident, the Phoenix-based station quoted a source as saying. Facility: It is an ‘absolutely horrifying situation’ Hacienda officials have called the situation “a deeply disturbing incident” and said they are cooperating with law enforcement and state agencies. The company’s chief executive officer, Bill Timmons, resigned Monday. Hacienda “will accept nothing less than a full accounting of this absolutely horrifying situation, an unprecedented case that has devastated everyone involved, from the victim and her family to Hacienda staff at every level of our organization,” said Gary Orman, executive vice president of Hacienda HealthCare’s board of directors. Last week the state’s department of economic security sent investigators to the facility for health and safety checks. Spokesman Brett Bezio said the work was finished but didn’t give any details about the results of the visits with patients. The department of health ordered Hacienda to implement “heightened safety measures,” spokeswoman Melissa Blasius-Nuanez said. Thompson told reporters that changes apparently have been made. “At this point it is our understanding that steps have been taken to protect anybody that’s there, and that was one of our concerns from the beginning,” he said. This story has been updated to clarify the woman’s medical condition. She is in a vegetative state, not a coma. It has also been updated to give the correct number of years she has been a patient at the facility. CNN’s Sara Sidner reported from Phoenix. CNN’s Keith Allen and Steve Almasy reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN’s Amanda Watts, Sheena Jones, Marlena Baldacci and Chris Boyette contributed to this report.<doc-sep>EMBED >More News Videos Police investigating after woman in nursing home gives birth PHOENIX, Arizona -- Police have served a search warrant to get DNA from all male employees at a long-term care facility in Phoenix where a patient who was in a vegetative state for years gave birth , triggering reviews by state agencies and putting a spotlight on safety concerns for severely disabled or incapacitated patients.Hacienda HealthCare, the company that owns the facility, said Tuesday that it welcomed the DNA testing of employees. "We will continue to cooperate with Phoenix Police and all other investigative agencies to uncover the facts in this deeply disturbing, but unprecedented situation," the company said in a statement.Local news website Azfamily.com first reported the woman, who had been in a vegetative state for more than 10 years after a near-drowning, delivered a baby on Dec. 29.Officials with the San Carlos Apache tribe said the 29-year-old woman was an enrolled member of the tribe, whose reservation is in southeastern Arizona about 134 miles (215 kilometers) east of Phoenix.The woman was still in a vegetative state when she gave birth, the tribe said in a statement that redacted her name. It's unclear if staff members at the facility were aware of her pregnancy until the birth. "On behalf of the tribe, I am deeply shocked and horrified at the treatment of one of our members," tribal chairman Terry Rambler said. "When you have a loved one committed to palliative care, when they are most vulnerable and dependent upon others, you trust their caretakers. Sadly, one of her caretakers was not to be trusted and took advantage of her. It is my hope that justice will be served. "A lawyer for the woman's family said in a statement that her family was outraged at the "neglect of their daughter" and asked for privacy. "The family would like me to convey that the baby boy has been born into a loving family and will be well cared for," Phoenix attorney John Micheaels said in a statement.San Carlos Apache Police Chief Alejandro Benally said Phoenix police "will do all they can to find the perpetrator. "A spokesman for Hacienda HealthCare said investigators served a search warrant Tuesday to obtain DNA samples from all male staffers.In a statement, board member Gary Orman said the facility "will accept nothing less than a full accounting of this absolutely horrifying situation. ""We will do everything in our power to ensure the safety of every single one of our patients and our employees," Orman said.Hacienda CEO Bill Timmons stepped down Monday, spokesman David Leibowitz said. The decision was unanimously accepted by the provider's board of directors.Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey's office has called the situation "deeply troubling. "Phoenix police so far have declined comment.The Hacienda facility serves infants, children and young adults who are "medically fragile" or have developmental disabilities, according to its website. In the wake of the reports, the Arizona Department of Health Services said new safety measures have been implemented. They include increased staff presence during any patient interaction, more monitoring of patient care areas and additional security measures involving visitors.The state's online complaint database for care facilities shows multiple complaints about Hacienda de Los Angeles going back to 2013. Most of them involve fire drill and evacuation preparation or Medicaid eligibility. But one complaint from December 2013 outlines an allegation that a staff member made inappropriate sexual comments about four patients two months earlier. Nobody relayed the incidents to an administrator. That employee was later fired.Martin Solomon, a personal injury attorney in Phoenix whose clients are mostly vulnerable adult victims of abuse and neglect, said a lawyer representing this woman should call for all pertinent medical records, a list of current and ex-employees and any past litigation involving Hacienda. It would be the police who would lead DNA testing to figure out who fathered the baby, Solomon said.It would be hard for Hacienda to escape any kind of liability in court. "There's a lot of information we do not have. But things like this don't happen without someone either knowing about it or should have known about it," Solomon said. "Whether it's an employee or someone from the outside, the facility has an obligation to protect residents. "Advocates for the disabled say Arizona needs to find a way to monitor allegations of sexual abuse and sexual violence in group settings. Doing background checks isn't enough, said Erica McFadden, executive director of the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council. "I think when you've had somebody who's had multiple allegations from different parties, there has to be some way to track that," McFadden said. "If it's the same story from different people, then there's something wrong. "The council recently formed a task force to look at how to improve training for health care workers when it comes to identifying and reporting sexual abuse. "We don't have a systematic way to train people what's a good touch or a bad touch. We also don't have required training for providers," McFadden said. "We really need a lot of work in this area. "Jon Meyers, executive director of The Arc of Arizona, an advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, called the allegations "disturbing, to put it mildly. ""I wasn't there. I clearly don't have firsthand knowledge of what happened," Meyers said. "But I can't believe someone receiving that level of constant care wasn't recognized as being pregnant prior to the time she delivered."<doc-sep>
Update: Nathan Sutherland, a 36-year-old nurse at the Hacienda HealthCare facility has been arrested and charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of vulnerable adult abuse, according to the Associated Press. The CEO of a Phoenix, Arizona, health facility has resigned amid a police investigation into the rape and subsequent pregnancy of a female patient who has been a vegetative state for more than a decade. Bill Timmons “terminated his employment” with the Hacienda HealthCare center earlier this week, the facility said in a statement to Huffington Post. According to KPHO-TV, which broke the story, the unidentified 29-year-old patient had been raped several times, and the staff had no idea she was pregnant until she went into labor and gave birth to a healthy baby boy on December 29th. On Tuesday, January 8th, investigators served Hacienda HealthCare with a search warrant for DNA samples from all of its male employees in hopes of finding out who is responsible for the woman’s rape and pregnancy. In a statement, the facility said this latest step by law enforcement is a “welcome development” in the investigation. “We had consulted attorneys to determine whether it would be legal for our company to compel our employees to undergo DNA testing conducted through Hacienda or for Hacienda to conduct voluntary genetic testing of staffers,” the facility said. “We were told it would be a violation of federal law in either instance. … We will continue to cooperate with Phoenix Police and all other investigative agencies to uncover the facts in this deeply disturbing, but unprecedented situation.” The victim has been in a vegetative state for 14 years following a near drowning incident, and is an enrolled member of the local San Carlos Apache Tribe, the tribe’s spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday. “On behalf of the Tribe, I am deeply shocked and horrified at the treatment of one of our members,” Terry Rambler said. “When you have a loved one committed to palliative care, when they are most vulnerable and dependent upon others, you trust their caretakers. Sadly, one of her caretakers was not to be trusted and took advantage of her.” In an anonymous interview with ABC-15, a former caregiver for the woman expressed disbelief that her pregnancy went unnoticed. “I can’t believe that somebody would bathe her daily for nine months and never know that she wasn’t having a period, that she [was] growing in her midsection, that nurses weren’t keeping track [of her weight],” the former caregiver said. “Those things are shocking to me.” Comatose pregnancies — including those resulting from sexual assault while the person is temporarily or permanently unconscious, or braindead — are extremely rare but not without precedent. In 2015, a Spanish-language publication in Argentina reported on a similar case in which a woman in a coma had been sexually assaulted and impregnated, but the family didn’t press charges and the case was never investigated by police. Regardless of the legality of the precipitating sex act, comatose pregnancies come with both medical risks and complex ethical issues for the victim’s family to navigate. “It’s possible to bring a fetus to term, but it depends on how far you are in the pregnancy,” bioethicist Arthur Caplan said in an interview with Vice in 2015. “If you’re at 28 weeks, you could probably have a C-section. But if you were only two weeks pregnant, I don’t think many hospitals would try that, because it could harm the fetus.” However, that’s exactly what happened in 2001, when doctors in Cincinnati learned a patient named Chastity Cooper was two weeks pregnant when she suffered serious head injuries in a car accident and lapsed into a coma. The pregnancy was carried to term and delivered vaginally, as doctors ruled out a C-section because of the risks of giving anesthesia to comatose patients. In 1995, a woman identified only as “Kathy,” who had been in a coma for a decade, was raped and impregnated by an aide at a New York nursing home. Kathy’s pregnancy was discovered when she was four months along, but her Roman Catholic family was against abortion and chose to have her carry the fetus to term. Kathy died shortly before her son’s first birthday, and the case resulted in the passing of “Kathy’s Law” in 1998, which requires background checks for nursing aides.