Nursing Home Rapist Gets 25 Years

This is the latest in one of the cases that inspired FRIDA in 2005 to form a response to problems affecting women with disabilities.

Man sentenced in nursing home rape - Associated Press

Thu May 31, 2007 4:44 pm (PST)

WHEATON — A DuPage County judge sentenced a former nurse's aide to 25 years in prison Wednesday for raping and impregnating a nursing home resident who couldn't walk, talk or feed herself. The woman gave birth to the baby, and her mother is raising the baby in Rockford. The child is developmentally disabled, she says. The victim's mother has filed a lawsuit in Cook County seeking more than $1 million in damages from Alden Village, its management company, her daughter's former physician and 20-year-old Reynaldo Brucal Jr.

"This is beyond outrageous, frankly," Circuit Judge George Bakalis said in handing down the near-maximum punishment to Brucal Jr. "These people are disabled and we as a society have a responsibility to care and protect them and make sure that they are not harmed."Bakalis also ordered that Brucal, of Schaumburg, be deported to hisnative Philippines after his prison term.

Brucal changed his plea to guilty on the aggravated criminal sexual assault charge last year after DNA evidence showed that he was the father of the patient's infant daughter. The rape at the Alden Village Health Facility for Children and YoungAdults in Bloomingdale was only discovered in June 2005 after the then 23-year-old victim, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was found to be 28 weeks pregnant. The victim and her twin sister, who had lived at Alden Village since they were 10, then were removed from the facility. She gave birth by emergency C-section on July 20, 2005, at a Chicago hospital.

Bloomingdale police later took DNA samples from all the male workers at the nursing home and matched Brucal's to the infant. Brucal worked from September 2004 until his arrest Nov. 1, 2005, at Alden Village. The Illinois Department of Public Health fined Alden Village $10,000 for lacking oversight and mishandling its investigation of the incident.

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