by Anthony DeMatteo
Staff Writer
Sandra Banning said the only thing harder than putting her mother in a nursing home six years ago was burying her.
Virginia Thurston was a Navy wife who raised four children, including Banning, while her husband served about half of their lives together overseas.
Thurston and Banning were best friends, spending days shopping and eating lunch at the seafood restaurants Thurston loved.
When dementia began to overcome her mother’s mind, Banning and her siblings fought heartache and placed Thurston in a nursing home.
But for Thurston and her family, inside Jacksonville’s Southwood Nursing Center, Inc. is where the worst of the heartache happened.
A jury awarded Banning $750,000 Feb. 23 in her lawsuit against Southwood, where on July 23, 2002, Thurston was raped by a fellow resident and longtime sex criminal.
The rapist, Ivey Edwards, who is now 87, lives in a Florida mental institution. He was deemed unfit to stand trial.
Thurston died a year after the assault from unrelated causes at the age of 78.
The co-defendant in the case was Southwood’s parent company, Sterling Healthcare, Inc.
A Sterling representative did not return a message regarding this story.
Local attorneys Hugh Cotney and Jeff Morrow represented Banning. Cotney said it was revealed at trial that, while at Southwood, Edwards hit a staff member, threatened his roommate and stabbed a social worker.
“They had red flags time and time again that this man was dangerous, that someone should have controlled him,” said Cotney.
Banning said Edwards’ violence was known to the staff.
“The nurse that found him in the act (of rape) was so scared of him, because she knew his reputation, she took off,” said Banning. “She ran and got help.”
Morrow said records of Edwards sexually molesting children in the 1960s could not be allowed as evidence in the trial, in part because they were not detailed enough.
“On two of the convictions from ‘66, the clerk records were so old – it basically said he was convicted of molesting a child and got a year in jail – but it wasn’t certified,” said Morrow.
Last summer, Illinois passed a law requiring the state’s Department of Law Enforcement to perform background checks on anyone applying for admittance to a residential nursing facility, and mandating the posting of signs informing residents that a sexual criminal is among them. It is the only state with such a requirement.
Now, Banning said she will lobby Florida lawmakers to institute mandatory background checks for all potential residents of long-term care facilities.
“I would like to see the law that is already in place in Illinois be mirrored here,” said Banning. “My goal is to make them do at least the minimum Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) background check before allowing them to be admitted.”
Banning said nursing homes need information on the violent criminal histories of possible residents so accommodations can be made to protect others.
“I know people of Mr. Edwards’ ilk need a place to be housed,” she said. “But I think with his violent background and his history, he should have been put in Chattahoochee (State Mental Facility) when they took him off the street.”
After the rape, Banning said it took an FDLE officer about an hour to find 13 pages of Edwards’ criminal history, including 59 arrests since 1945.
“That should alert the nursing home that this is somebody that has to be segregated, even at night, watched during the day, and not allowed to roam at will,” she said.
A pervasive problem
The watchdog group, A Perfect Cause, has identified more than 800 registered sexual offenders living in America’s nursing homes. It has chronicled 44 cases, including Thurston’s, in which patients have been victimized by fellow residents, including 32 sexual crimes.
In February 2005, 68-year-old John Enos, who in the 1980s was convicted of the rape and abuse of a child, raped his 90-year-old roommate in a Massachusetts facility.
In 2004, a Brooklyn, N.Y. nursing-home resident and convicted sex criminal, Samuel Irving, 43, admitted to raping and beating a 78-year-old invalid woman at the facility where they lived.
Banning said many unreported sexual assaults likely occur in the nation’s nursing home facilities.
“I don’t think this was Mr. Edwards’ first offense,” said Banning. “I think this was the first time he was caught.”
Last year, Florida Sen. Durrell Peadon introduced a bill that would have required FBI background checks on potential nursing home residents. It died in committee.
“There was not the support I anticipated,” said Peadon. “But with a new governor with his background in law enforcement and human rights, I think this is a good atmosphere to move on that issue.”
Peadon said he might place a rider requiring background checks on one of the 2007 bills he is sponsoring. He said the verdict in the case against Edwards is indicative of the critical nature of the problem.
“When a jury comes along and issues a verdict like this, it is saying ‘This is wrong, and we ought to do something about it,’” he said. “And we will react.”
Banning is traveling to Tallahassee this week to meet with Peadon.
Cotney and Morrow said they will help Banning in her fight to change the law.
Cotney said during the trial, defense attorneys contended Edwards could not stand up from his wheelchair, but Cotney said evidence was presented that a few months before the rape, Edwards walked into Shands Hospital for treatment.
“There was also evidence that at least within a year, he had ridden a bicycle and he had a walker that he got around on,” said Cotney. “If they did not know he could do these things, that was their responsibility, and they failed miserably to fulfill their duty to protect those in their nursing home.”
At the time of the rape, Cotney said Edwards was in a wheelchair he operated by turning its wheels manually.
“They did nothing,” said Cotney. “They just gave him free roam of the nursing home and the inevitable and foreseeable thing happened, he committed an atrocious crime.”
A private person
After the rape, Banning accompanied her mother to a sexual assault treatment center.
“My mother was a very private person, she wouldn’t even let me change her bra,” said Banning. “It was both mentally and physically painful for her. It broke my heart.”
The three-day trial was presided over by Senior Circuit Judge James Harrison, who Banning and her attorneys praised for his fairness. Banning also said the jury’s verdict emboldened her faith in the American justice system.
“It reinforces my belief in the system, that it is fair,” said Banning.
It is a system, Cotney said, that is under attack.
“There’s an organized assault against the civil justice system in this country by those who would cut off innocent, injured victims’ rights in court,” said Cotney. “It’s gratifying to see that an enlightened jury understands the law and understands the seriousness of this. The jury system works. There’s no other system like it in the world.”
Banning, whose father died in 1980, said she will use her mother as inspiration to prevent similar incidents from occurring.
“I think mother loved daddy until the day she died, she never remarried, that’s what made the rape so horrible,” she said. “I do not want this happening to someone else. Some people will try to stop me, but they did not count on this happening to someone Sandra Banning promised to protect.”
Banning said she misses the time she and her mother spent together.
“We would just ride in the car, she loved the ocean, she loved seafood,” said Banning. “She was like my best friend. We shopped together. We did all of these things together. My Saturdays were mama’s.”
Through all her tragedy, Banning said Thurston’s spirit did not change.
“She was always there for us, and she listened,” said Banning. “The dementia robbed her of that. But you could always look in mama’s eyes and see love. It didn’t affect her heart.”