As Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to what will likely be the rest of his life in prison, and still faces additional charges in California, I wanted to take this opportunity to reconfirm The Dickson Firm's commitment to standing up for anyone who has survived sexual assault or any other type of violence. 

First, I would like anyone reading this, who has been the victim of any type of violence to know, definitively, that you are not alone.  Perhaps one of the most important and significant results of the Me Too movement and the Times Up movement has been the significant number of people who have come forward and shared their stories.  So many people have survived aggression and violence.  It seems that a lot of these incidents, were made more possible or even more likely by the fact that the perpetrators got away with these incidents because their victims may have been reluctant to speak up.  Hopefully, as each brave survivor shares their story, others are encouraged to come forward, share their stories, so they can get the help and love and support that they need, and so that their attackers can be held fully accountable.

There is no excuse for sexual assault or any type of assault or violence.  Oftentimes, the victims feel shame or embarrassment.  They blame themselves.  These are very common feelings.  And yet, each survivor needs to understand that it is not their fault.  There is no justification for sexual assault. 

If you or someone you care about has been assaulted, and you would like to talk with someone, we here at The Dickson Firm will be happy to listen.  Whether the facts of your situation would enable us to pursue a civil case on your behalf or not, we would be happy to listen to you, so that you know that someone cares, that you are not alone, and that what happened to you is not your fault, and it is not okay.  However, you can absolutely be okay.  If you'd be more comfortable talking to one of the dedicated people at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, you can call or text them on their hotline at (216) 619-6192 or (440) 423-2020  https://clevelandrapecrisis.org/  Either way, if you have been the victim of sexual assault, it is important that you tell someone, so the perpetrator can be held accountable, and be prevented from hurting someone else, and so you can process what has occurred so that you can heal.

We are here for you.

E. Jean Carroll has accused Donald Trump of raping her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store.  President Trump's response was "she's not my type."  This response is horrific and symbolizes a common and devastating misconception about rape.  Rape is about power.  Rape is about violence.  Rape is about aggression.  Rape is not about sex.  Rape is not about being attracted to somebody.  Children are raped.  Infants are raped.  Elderly women are raped.  Men are raped.  Boys are raped.  Rape is not about sexual attraction.  Rape is not about normal sexual interaction.  Rape is not about romance.  Rape is about power.  Rape is about hurting the other person.  Rape is about placing the rapist's anger and need to hurt others and control others above any empathy or concern for the rapist's victim.

We at The Dickson Firm are committed to the rights and safety of vulnerable individuals everywhere.  We are committed to the rights of nursing home residents.  These residents have the right to a safe environment.  They have a right to be secure in the nursing home which for many nursing home residents is their home.  They have the right to be secure and safe from violence, from aggression, from hostility, and from assault.  Further, we are committed to the rights of everyone to be safe in their own bodies.  We are committed to the rights of children everywhere.  We are committed to the rights of anyone who is vulnerable or subject to aggression. 

We at The Dickson Firm are horrified by the President's comments.  To defend against this rape allegation by claiming that his accuser is not his type is an incredibly insensitive and intolerable thing for any man to say much less the President of the United States. 

If you or someone you care about has been the victim of sexual assault, we are here for you, and we would be happy to talk with you and to help you in any way that we can. 

Richard Strauss, the former Ohio State University Athletic Director, who is now deceased, abused at least 177 male students between 1979 and 1998.  University officials at the Ohio State University failed to notify the proper authorities, and failed to take adequate steps to address his actions according to a report that the Ohio State University released on Friday, May 17, 2019.  The long-awaited report confirms many of the allegations that former students publicly made against Dr. Strauss in the past year.  Strauss was a doctor who abused his position in many ways including requiring invasive exams for minor ailments to showering with students and performing sex acts. 

The Dickson Firm has always been committed to standing up for people who have been abused and neglected.  In our nursing home practice, we stand up every day for residents who have been abused and neglected by the nursing homes who were entrusted with their care.  We represent residents who are neglected for such an extensive period of time that they actually develop bedsores which in some cases are fatal.  We represent residents who are neglected and not monitored and not adequately supervised and are allowed to wander and sometimes fall and suffer serious injuries and sometimes leave the nursing home unattended and suffer serious injuries.  Many of these residents die as a result of the neglect of the nursing home.

We also have a particular commitment to survivors of sexual assault and abuse.  Our founder, Blake Dickson, is extremely involved with the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center.  He is very involved with their fundraising efforts.  He is also one of a group of attorneys who has pledged to volunteer their time to work with victims of sexual assault, including appearing in court with them, providing them with legal advice and providing them with support. 

It can be extremely difficult for survivors of sexual assault to come forward.  They are reluctant to tell their story.  They are reluctant to reveal to anyone what has happened to them.  Particularly in the case of male victims, there is a great deal of shame involved.  At The Dickson Firm, we are committed to working with any victim who seeks our help.  We want you to know that it is not your fault.  You have nothing to be ashamed of.  It can be very empowering for survivors of sexual assault to pursue those individuals who have wronged them and to prevail in civil litigation.  In some cases, unfortunately, the criminal prosecution of the assailant is not successful.  The assailant is not held responsible by the criminal justice system.  In some of those cases, The Dickson Firm has been able to prevail on behalf of their client in civil litigation.  This has enabled those survivors to feel vindicated.  The Dickson Firm is committed to listening to each one of our clients and to providing them with whatever help we can. 

We see you. 

We hear you. 

We are here for you. 

While Dr. Strauss is deceased, Ohio State University chose not to take the adequate steps with respect to Dr. Strauss, chose not to fire him, chose not to warn students about him, may very well be liable to his victims. 

If any survivor of sexual assault, whether a survivor of Dr. Strauss' abuse or any survivor of sexual assault would like to talk with one of the attorneys at The Dickson firm, it would be our pleasure to speak with you, and to help you in any way that we can. 

State investigators in Arizona are examining $3.4 million in possible Medicaid fraud at the parent company of a Phoenix nursing center where a woman in a vegetative state was raped and gave birth to a boy in December, according to court records.

The inquiry into the company, Hacienda HealthCare, began in 2016, when investigators at the health agency that manages the state’s Medicaid program started asking questions about Hacienda’s organizational and accounting structure. Investigators wanted to know whether Hacienda executives improperly shifted overhead expenses in the company to a subsidiary at the same location that then overcharged the state’s Medicaid program.

Investigators with the inspector general’s office of the state health agency, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, have told Hacienda that $3.4 million in Medicaid payments to the company, for expenses from July 2013 to June 2014, appears suspicious and potentially fraudulent.

Nearly three years after the inquiry began, the state and the company are still locked in a legal battle. Hacienda officials have refused to turn over thousands of pages of internal financial documents sought by the state in multiple subpoenas, arguing that the requests are burdensome and beyond the state’s investigative scope. The state has said the investigation cannot be completed without them.

In an effort to force Hacienda to comply with the subpoenas, the state health agency sued the company in 2017 in Maricopa County Superior Court. A judge ruled in the state’s favor but Hacienda appealed, which is where the case stands today in the Arizona Court of Appeals.

“We can confirm that the office does have an open investigation into Hacienda related to fraud, waste and abuse,” Heidi Capriotti, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, said. “As part of that investigation, A.H.C.C.C.S. requested a variety of Hacienda’s financial records, and sought enforcement of its administrative subpoena when Hacienda refused to comply with the request.”

Hacienda said in a statement on Friday: “At every step in the process, Hacienda has strenuously denied any and all allegations of overpayment. The company has produced a voluminous set of records to the investigating agency meant to prove that no such overpayments occurred. Most importantly, this lawsuit has nothing to do with quality of care issues.”

In earlier court filings, the company said that it had used the same “cost-effective management structure” since 2001 and that this structure had been approved by independent auditors and was not questioned by state regulators until the 2016 investigation. The company said it had turned over more than 16,000 pages of documents to the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System but had resisted the agency’s other requests.

“A.H.C.C.C.S. exceeded its authority, and the superior court’s order enforcing the subpoena should be vacated,” lawyers for the company wrote in the appeal.

While that investigation continues, detectives with the Phoenix Police Department recently opened a criminal investigation at a nursing home operated by Hacienda HealthCare after a 29-year-old woman who has been in a coma nearly her entire life gave birth to a boy there on Dec. 29. The two investigations have brought intense national scrutiny on Hacienda, Arizona’s largest privately operated long-term nursing company for people with developmental disabilities. People in its care have a range of intellectual and physical disabilities.

In recent years, Hacienda has also been investigated by the Arizona Department of Health Services over the treatment of its patients. In 2013, the agency found that a male employee at the nursing home being investigated, the Hacienda Skilled Nursing Facility, had made sexually explicit remarks to patients, including telling a resident that his penis was erect. In 2017, investigators reported that employees freely walked in on patients while they were naked and showering.

The woman at the center of the police investigation has been at Hacienda since she was 3. She cannot move on her own, cannot communicate and requires total supervision, according to health records obtained by The New York Times.

The San Carlos Apache Tribe, whose reservation is about 100 miles east of Phoenix, said the woman was an “enrolled member” of the tribe. The tribe’s chairman and her mother, who was granted permanent guardianship in 2009, have not returned calls seeking comment.

On Friday, the police released a frantic 911 call from the Hacienda nursing center when the woman went into labor on Dec. 29. The caller said no one knew that the woman had been pregnant. Both the mother and the baby were recovering at a Phoenix hospital, the police said this week.

“She was not in a position to give consent to any of this,” Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman, said on Wednesday. “This was a helpless victim who was sexually assaulted.”

Since the Phoenix police announced their investigation a week ago, detectives have collected the DNA of male employees at Hacienda; the state dispatched health inspectors to check on the other patients there; and the company’s longtime chief executive, Bill Timmons, resigned. Over nearly three decades, Mr. Timmons had built Hacienda into a major player in long-term health care in Arizona.

The company says it operates more than 40 programs through its subsidiaries, which provide services to more than 2,000 people every year. The Hacienda Skilled Nursing Facility, which is one of those subsidiaries, has at least 74 patient beds, according to federal records. Most of the subsidiaries operate out of the same property, about six miles south of downtown Phoenix, and share the same directors and executives.

From 2009 to last October, Hacienda received at least $6.7 million from the state in Medicaid funding and other money, according to public records. In his position at Hacienda, Mr. Timmons was well compensated over the past decade, according to the company’s financial filings. His total pay doubled from 2008 to 2017, when he received $674,212 in salary and other compensation.

But he resigned abruptly on Monday after reports of the police investigation became public, the company announced. Mr. Timmons had been at the center of the legal wrangling between Hacienda and the state, and he had fiercely defended the company’s corporate structure as legal and above board.

When Mr. Timmons resigned, Gary Orman, the executive vice president of the company’s board, said Hacienda would “accept nothing less than a full accounting of this absolutely horrifying situation.”

Read the full article as originally posted at The New York Times.

The police collected the DNA of male employees of a private nursing home in Arizona this week as they broadened the investigation into allegations that a woman in a vegetative state there who gave birth to a child last month had been sexually assaulted.

On Wednesday, the Phoenix Police Department appealed to the community for information related to the case and said the investigation could evolve as detectives learn more about the circumstances of the woman’s pregnancy and the conception of the child.

“Right now we are investigating a sexual assault,” Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman, said at a news conference. “Wherever this investigation takes us, we are prepared to go forward with it.”

The moves represented an escalation in the case, which on Monday prompted the resignation of the longtime chief executive of Hacienda HealthCare, the parent company of the nursing home. The police announced Friday that they had opened the investigation into the alleged assault.

David Leibowitz, a spokesman for Hacienda Healthcare, said Tuesday that it welcomed the action by the police and had considered conducting voluntary genetic testing of its staff before company lawyers said that doing so would be illegal.

“Hacienda stands committed to doing everything in our power to bring this police investigation to a quick conclusion,” the company statement said. “We will continue to cooperate with Phoenix Police and all other investigative agencies to uncover the facts in this deeply disturbing” situation.

Sergeant Thompson said Wednesday that the investigation began after the authorities responded to a 911 call on Dec. 29 that reported a baby in distress at the nursing home. When they arrived, they found a baby that had been born to a woman who was “unable to move and unable to communicate.”

“She was not in a position to give consent to any of this,” Sergeant Thompson said. “This was a helpless victim who was sexually assaulted.”

He said that the baby had been delivered by the staff of the nursing home and that it was unclear if any staff members had known that the woman was pregnant.

He said both mother and baby were recovering at a nearby hospital. The woman has not been publicly identified by the police.

Court records obtained by The New York Times indicated that the victim was born in 1989 and had been at the facility since 1992, suggesting that she may have been in her current condition since the age of 3. They said she required total supervision.

Medical exam results filed with the court last spring said her condition had not changed and described both her rehabilitation prognosis and chance of discharge as “poor.”

It was not clear how many male employees or others the police would obtain DNA from to be tested. Sergeant Thompson said that investigators had not identified a suspect in the case but that there was “a large number of individuals that we will gather evidence from.”

He said investigators had served search warrants at the nursing home to obtain records that may help identify a suspect and had also used mouth swabs to obtain DNA, which he called “one of the key evidentiary factors” in the case.

In a separate development, the San Carlos Apache Tribe said in a statement on Tuesday that the woman at the center of the case is an “enrolled member” of the tribe.

Speaking on behalf of the tribe, its chairman, Terry Rambler, said he was “deeply shocked and horrified.”

“When you have a loved one committed to palliative care, when they are most vulnerable and dependent upon others, you trust their caretakers,” Mr. Rambler said. “It is my hope that justice will be served.”

A lawyer for the woman’s family, John A. Micheaels, said in a statement on Tuesday that the baby was a boy who “has been born into a loving family and will be well cared for.”

“The family obviously is outraged, traumatized and in shock by the abuse and neglect of their daughter at Hacienda HealthCare,” Mr. Micheaels said, adding that they did not wish to make a public statement.

The Arizona Department of Health Services said it was aware of the allegations and would conduct an inspection of the center, which is about seven miles south of downtown Phoenix. It specializes in the care of people with intellectual disabilities and has at least 74 patient beds, according to federal records.

Records posted to the Medicare website indicate that the facility received a “below average” rating from health inspectors in 2017. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rated its quality of resident care as “much below average.”

Episodes in which incapacitated patients are raped and become pregnant are not unprecedented, though they are rare.

In 1996, a woman from Rochester, who had been in a coma for a decade after a car accident, gave birth to a two-pound baby boy. When her belly began swelling, workers at the care facility in Brighton, N.Y., tested her for intestinal blockages but later determined through DNA testing that she had been assaulted by a nursing assistant, who was found guilty of rape and imprisoned.

Experts at the time said that was the country’s first recorded episode of a woman in a chronic vegetative state giving birth. The case drew additional attention because the parents of the woman, whose name was Kathy, chose to allow the pregnancy to continue and eventually adopted the child. Kathy died before the boy’s first birthday.

New York State subsequently passed “Kathy’s Law” in 1998, which imposed stiffer penalties for health care workers found guilty of abusing patients in nursing homes.

That same year, a woman in a coma at a home in Massachusetts gave birth to a baby girl prematurely and with severe brain damage. According to a report by The Associated Press at the time, the police asked for blood samples from male employees and a registered nurse’s aide was later convicted of rape and sent to prison.

Matthew Haag, Margaret Kramer and Rebekah Zemansky contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Click here to read the article as originally published at The New York Times.