May 14, 2009 12:06 am US/Eastern
I-Team: Who's Living In The Nursing Home Near You?
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (CBS4) ―
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"It's been seven years. Seems like yesterday, hurts like today," said the still grief-stricken daughter.
On a night that would forever change her life, Virginia Thurston went to bed wearing a smile. She was a 77-year-old grandmother who had no idea of the horror that awaited her.
"She was here for protection. How could they do that to my mama?" asked Sandra Banning, Thurston's only daughter.
That's the wrenching question she lives with. Banning had insisted her mother, who suffered from dementia, move into a Jacksonville nursing home. For the first time since her mother was raped by another patient, Banning visited the site with
CBS4 Chief I-Team Investigator Michele Gillen.
"It's been seven years. Seems like yesterday, hurts like today," said the still grief stricken daughter staring at what was once the facility where her mother lived.
One night, when she thought her mother was safely put to bed, another patient entered her room and sexually assaulted the frail, 5-foot woman suffering from dementia.
"I know that when I had to take her to the sexual assault center and she had to be examined--when I looked at the tears rolling out of her eyes--there is no doubt in my mind that she knew, none."
In need of a watchful eye, it was because of the dementia that she placed her mother in the nursing home. At the time, it was named Southwood.
"You never get hardened to it, because it kills me. It tears my heart out every time I have to think about it. To know that she was assaulted in one of those rooms in there. And that's why I put her in a nursing home. I'd say 'mother, you can't walk the streets at night, you are going to get raped.' And she said, 'Oh Sandra, who is going to want to rape an old woman?' Ivey Edwards would rape an old woman," said Banning.
Who is Ivey Edwards? The
CBS4 I-Team investigation finds the stain of Edwards' criminal past is visible across Florida, from Homestead to Jacksonville and everywhere in between. He spent a lifetime criminally criss-crossing the state, arrested not once or twice, but 58 times, including for child molestation, sexual assault, burglary, carrying a concealed weapon, DUI and a hit and run.
"When Ivey Edwards was arrested for assaulting my mother, it was his 59th arrest. 59 times! Child molestation. Sexual assault. And my mother was his 59th," said Banning as she looked at a copy of his booking photo from the arrest in her mother's case. "I look at his picture and I see that of a monster."
Virginia Thurston had been the wife of a Navy hero and the beloved mother of four. With advancing age, Thurston became increasingly frail and forgetful, the dementia rendering her vulnerable. On a July night, her daughter's greatest fear unfolded. As nurses were making their rounds, they found something was blocking the door to her room.
"Ivey Edwards was in a wheelchair. Ivey Edwards took that wheelchair and put it under mother's door where nobody could disturb him. He climbed out of that wheelchair, walked around and got in my mother's bed and assaulted her. What do I say to wheelchairs? It was a tool of his trade," Banning told Gillen.
Edwards was 83-years-old at the time.
How is it that an Ivey Edwards, given his criminal record, ended up in the same nursing home as Sandra Banning's mother? The
CBS4 I-Team investigation finds it was at the request and under the protection of the Florida Department of Children and Families -- the state agency charged with protecting Florida's elderly.
"They locked the monster away behind doors with my mother where she has no escape," said Banning.
"It's a shocking thing about nursing homes in America, we're putting predators in with the prey," said Wes Bledsoe, founder of A Perfect Cause, an organization committed to tracking sexual offenders and predators in America's nursing homes.
"We're putting violent and sexual offenders to live with our disabled and elderly loved ones who can't physically defend themselves or report what's happened to them," added Bledsoe, who testified last year before a U.S. Congressional hearing on this very matter.
"We know that people are being raped, sexually assaulted, and even murdered by criminal offenders while living in long term care facilities," Bledsoe said.
Bledsoe has repeatedly screened Florida's sex offender registry. In 2005, he located 37 registered sex offenders in the state's nursing homes. And his most recent screening (which he conducted for the
CBS4 I-Team) turned up 80 registered sex offenders living in nursing homes across the state.
Where is Ivey Edwards today? Sandra Banning wants to know. "I don't know what happened to him," she said.
And the
CBS4-I Team has learned neither does the state. Following his arrest at the nursing home, it was determined that he was incompetent to stand trial. He was placed at the Florida State Hospital at Chattahooche and released in 2005. DCF tells us that he is no longer under their supervision and they do not know where he is.
"They let him back out so he can do it again," fears a worried Banning.
If alive, Edwards could be in another nursing home. All the more reason Banning is pushing for laws that would require nursing homes to do criminal background checks on residents and not keep it a secret.
"Some nursing homes are not going to do it on their own. We have to get the legislation passed to make them require background checks, to make them notify the residents, the residents family and the staff," she said.
Sandra Banning's mother died just over a year after the rape. At the Jacksonville cemetery where Virginia Thurston was buried, her daughter Sandra wipes away tears and a spray of leaves atop the marker enscribed "Everybody's Mama."
"She was everybody's mama," Banning said with a smile as she tenderly touched her mother's name.
"She's proud. I know she is looking down from heaven and she is saying 'you go girl. You give them hell.' And I am. Every chance I get," said Banning.
For more information on Wes Bledsoe's mission, contact
A Perfect Cause.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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