Lean staffing, lax hiring, training flaws: Why assaults at hospitals are up
Violent crime in hospitals is up, self-reported hospital data shows, with incidents of assault, rape, sexual assault and homicide rose 77% over the past two years.
After fainting on the job with a low hemoglobin count in early January 2021, Lenna Ray, then 67, went to HCA Florida Citrus Hospital in Inverness, Florida, for care. Ray was moved to a private room in the emergency department where, over the next four hours, Hiram Bonilla, a male nurse, repeatedly sexually assaulted her, court and police records show.
“He was putting stickers on my chest for an EKG and he said, ‘You got pretty titties,’” Ray recalled in an interview with NBC News. “By the time he finished that statement, he was on me.”
Hospital video reviewed by NBC News shows Bonilla entered Ray’s room 28 times over those four hours, every nine minutes on average.
Heavily medicated, Ray told hospital staff what Bonilla had done, but they pooh-poohed her, she testified, with one staffer telling her Bonilla was “a very good man” and “would never do” what she’d accused him of, court records show.
Ray called her longtime therapist from the hospital and told her about the incidents. The therapist then notified a local center that helps sexual abuse victims. At 2:15 a.m. on Jan. 6, the abuse center notified Citrus Hospital of Bonilla’s alleged assaults, court documents show. It then took almost six hours for the hospital to alert police to the allegations.
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