This problem will come to the UK

By James Nye

PUBLISHED: 07:30, 23 July 2013 | UPDATED: 07:41, 23 July 2013

Sex among dementia sufferers from the Baby Boomer generation is set to become a legal minefield for nursing homes and bring potential heart-break to their healthy spouses and children.

Currently, there approximately five million people in the U.S. who have Alzheimer’s and with 40 million people in the U.S. now currently aged over 65 – that number is expected to rise over the next decade to 7.1 million.

With those numbers only due to go up, the $120 billion nursing home industry expects massive financial growth – but as the Baby Boomers age, their carers and families will surely be faced with difficult legal, ethical and moral questions.

One case in point is an Iowa nursing home, Windmill Manor in Coralville which endured a horrific case in which a 78-year-old former college professor and an 87-year year woman were discovered having sex.

Both had children. The woman had a healthy husband. Both suffered dementia.

At around 3.30 a.m. on November 17th, 2009, nurse Starla Wheelock checked upon the un-named 87-year-old woman’s room to find her and the 78-year-old man sitting on her bed, talking, naked from the waist down.

This was not a surprise to the nursing homes staff, who had noted them becoming friendly before hand. What struck them as tragic though was the woman’s insistence on calling the man by her husband’s name.

However, they noted that the woman was calmed by the former college professor, who was dying from colon cancer and also had arthritis.

Sadly, it has long been noted that Alzheimer sufferers lose their sense of touch last.

‘You can get responses from people in the final stages of the disease by giving them a massage or a pedicure,’ said Beth Kallmyer, vice president of constituent services for the Alzheimer’s Association to Bloomberg.com.

The man had two daughters and three sons, while the woman’s husband was still alive and so was her son, who was 59.

The woman’s dementia was far more severe than the man’s and caused her to exhibit behavioral issues” included ‘physical aggression, yelling, refusing medications, and pinching and hitting staff.’

A care plan devised by the nursing staff suggested soothing her by chatting and offering Oreo cookies.

After the November incident, staff devised a plan to keep the two away from each other and they called one of the man’s daughters and the woman’s son and told them what had happened.

Neither the man nor woman were removed from the home.

Then early on Christmas evening, two nurses approached senior figures at the home to see that they had witnessed the man and woman having sex in the man’s room.

When staff interrupted them, the man hastily zipped up his pants and the woman tried to attack the staff.

A nurse examined the woman. Her vaginal area appeared reddened and she had bruises on her lower shins and the families of both the man and the woman were contacted.

The woman’s son was informed there had been sex and was asked if he wanted his mother examined by a doctor – he declined, because he said he was told it was a ‘mutual sex act.’

He did not tell his father.

However, a serious issue arose when the nursing home chief’s had to decide whether to notify state regulators sexual intercourse had taken place.

In a decision which had huge ramifications, the nursing home decide not to because in their opinion there was no physical injuries to the woman and the woman was vocal and expressive about other things she didn’t want and turned on staff when they interrupted her and the man,

Windmill Manor still took steps to avoid more sexual encounters between the two. These included keeping them apart and prescribing drugs to curb the man’s sexual urges. No more sexual episodes were documented.

In 2010, during an inspection, officers discovered the incident from staff and then began a thorough investigation.

The investigation found that the nursing home had failed to protect the woman from the man and was in immediate danger of being closed down.

The home acted and asked the man to leave for another facility – which he did on March 17th 2010.

The very next week, Steve Drobot, Windmill Manor administrator and Director of nursing Karen Etter, were fired with no reason given.

Six weeks later, the Department of Inspections and Appeals concluded the woman had been “sexually assaulted” and Windmill Manor had failed to report it. The agency fined the home $47,000. The home later agreed to pay a $14,500 fine without admitting to wrongdoing.

The woman died in September 2010 and hours before her death her son told his dad – and he forgave his wife because, ‘there was nothing she could have done.’

The man died in December 2010.

In January 2011, the woman’s family decided to launch a lawsuit.

Ten months after leaving Windmill Manor, Drobot was fired from his new job at another nursing care home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa – his prior history at Windmill Manor cited as a reason.

Faced with losing his administrators license over Windmill Manor at an Iowa Board of Nursing Home Administrators meeting, Drobot was backed up by two witnesses.

Robert Bender, a Des Moines, Iowa, geriatrician, told the board he thought the woman was capable of telling the man if she didn’t want sex.

Law professor Evelyn Tenenbaum of Albany Law School in Albany, New York agreed. She said the couples relationship appeared to be “consensual and beneficial to their well-being. It appears that everyone would have benefited if the nursing home supported the relationship.”

Then in September of 2012, the Iowa nursing board acquitted Drobot – and in November, the woman’s family settled the rape lawsuit with undisclosed terms.