I got raped at age 70 in my rural hospital 6 years ago. I reported it and reported it and the Bastards never even called me back. I emailed them over and over please help me I was raped in your hospital. Next email from them said, time for your breast exam. Honest.
Finally, a human employee emailed back, file a police report. I figured oh, That's how it's done. They'll see the police report and then they'll call me. So I called a PD with no SVU and told a rookie, a kid, a guy who was writing things down with a pen as I spoke, how these male and female visiting nurses at Barton Hospital finger banged me when they thought I was drugged and asleep. I wasn't asleep.
After filing my report, I waited for Barton to contact me so I could finally tell someone what happened and get some help. Never heard from them. Since then I've come to realize,
This is what it's like to be poor. I didn't become poor until 1996 which is a whole nother story. I'm just now getting used to it.
My Incredibly isolated circumstances contributed mostly to this Sexual assault incident. I had just moved into a HUD senior building and Had not really connected with my neighbors. My family, which includes two adult children, have decided I don't exist, which I now know from my neighbors happens a lot. So I'm in my 70s all alone with no one to even check on me when I'm in the hospital.
The sexual predators know who they can get to and I was open prey.
I was right there vulnerable, laid out and drugged for this horny couple to access freely in the middle of the night with no one around.
Earlier those same two nurses had told me how angry they were at Barton for the way it treats its visiting nurses.
I don't think I'm the only one who this has happened to. I live in a resort town that balloons in population during holidays, and since the hospital didn't even respond, how many tourists has this happened to who just went back to their home towns and said oh it's Tahoe it's so beautiful we don't want to cause trouble.
Oh, and if you were wondering why I didn't get a lawyer, everyone in this town worshiped Barton Hospital back then. They’ve since closed in fact not long after this incident hmm. No local lawyer was going to take on the hospital. no local news media group would take the story when Barton is practically the only thing that advertises around here.
Instead I tried to get help from my family and they didn't help. I tried to move. I called the US Department of Aging and had a nice phone relationship with the guy there for a while. When he heard my whole story he said, if you want to Find anything like a support group or advocacy organization, you're going to have to move out of Tahoe; because when you live in a small rural town in northern California, it's troglodyte territory, Like some of these people have values that date back to the 1950s and They have never even considered changing them. That IS changing now though. He does not work for the aging dept anymore.
Why am I still here?
Then came the Caldor fire evacuation. I had to go from hotel to hotel so many times that I tore a thousand tendons in my legs, and I've been crippled ever since. I don't even go to the grocery store. I have everything delivered and I'm just here on this property with beautiful trees and wandering bears. I stay home most of the time. I can't possibly move anywhere else by myself in this condition and I sure can't hire somebody to do all the work for me so this is where I landed.
I call it DIY hospice.
I wonder though, if along with this new unusual population of elderly women living all alone on a thousand a month, there might also be a phenomenon of seniors in hospitals with no family member visiting who end up getting raped by angry underpaid Hospital personnel. I bet there is.
PS: Worst thing about this is, the first time I went to Barton as a patient I presented as a sex Crime Victim suffering from PTSD. It's at the top of my patient chart and they let this happen to me.
Workaholism is a great escape so now back to the heating planet project on my blog
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