I am a relative of one of the abused residents. I am fortunate enough to be able to express what is happening to me & how I feel about it but the residents this has happened to are not. This does not mean that they were not terrified with what was happening to them or did not feel the pain & humiliation. They screamed, they yelled out, they got mad. The residents knew what was happening to them was not right, how could these girls not know? They stood watch for each other, they closed the curtains so they could tell if a door opened. They KNEW what they were doing was illegal & did not care. They thought it was funny, something to do when they were bored. This is verbal, physical, emotional & sexual abuse. We heard that one of the girls have gotten a job at another care facility in the area. We can only hope she does not get bored there. I would hope that the county attorney would look at this the same way he would at any abuse case. If they were abusing children would there be any questions of them being charged? These girls should ALL be tried as adults, as employees of the nursing home they had the trianing that was mandated by the state & knew this was wrong. If they knew this was wrong, still did it, & do not get the maximum punishment what kind of message is being sent about how we care for our elderly. I can not believe we are even discussing IF they are charged. They have all stated being involved. They have stated what the others have done. More then one person has told the same things about the others. The Freeborn county attorney needs to make sure that the consequences for these actions are severe enough to ALL parties involved to make sure this does not happen again.

Your outrage is clear. Hopefully justice will be done and they will get their voice.

These allegations are very serious. I agree that the people who perpetrate these actions toward these helpless residents should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. At the same time there are a host of others who by omission contributed to this horrific situation. Where was the director of nurses, where were the nursing supervisors or the nurses on the unit? Where was the social worker? If these people had provided the essential supervision of care providers, this would have had less opportunity to occur. Vigilance is for the protection of those who cannot speak and there is not any substitute for being on the floor, speaking to residents. Many of the voices do have voices when we take the time to talk to them. They can tell you they are afraid of certain people, they are able to express that the care is poor or frightening.