BRISTOL, Va. – The first time Patricia Davenport complained about a nursing aide’s mistreatment of a patient, she was told she saw it wrong.
The second time Davenport complained – and no action was taken – she quit the nursing job she’d had for only six months at the National HealthCare nursing home on North Street.
Eventually, Davenport told an investigator with the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia that she saw the same aide molesting two different nursing home patients during her time there.
That aide, James W. Wright, 35, was indicted Tuesday on four counts of aggravated sexual battery. Each count stems from the investigation into the treatment of a different patient from 2000 to 2007, including the lady Davenport said she saw in the wheelchair and another patient who is blind, authorities said.
Hours after Tuesday’s indictments, Bristol Virginia police arrested Wright at the Exit 7 International House of Pancakes, where he works as a waiter. He is being held without bond at the Bristol Virginia Jail.
Davenport said the first time she stumbled upon the abuse of patients was in August 2007. It was the sound of a rocking wheelchair that grabbed her attention, she said, as she strode down a hallway. She peeked into a patient’s room and saw a woman shaking in her wheelchair. The woman’s shirt and bra had been shoved high on her chest. A nurse’s aide was standing behind the wheelchair, and he was reaching around to fondle the patient’s breasts.
“She looked like she was just getting ready to break down,” Davenport said. “She just looked at you like ... she was so confused and hurt.”
Later that same month, Davenport said, she caught the same aide fondling a blind patient.
Soon after that incident, Wright left his employment at the nursing home. The conditions of his departure are unclear. Calls were not returned Tuesday by the Murfreesboro, Tenn.-based National HealthCare Corp., which runs the Bristol nursing home as well 75 others in Tennessee and other eastern states.
Virginia Department of Health Professions records show that Wright still holds an active license to work as a nurse’s aide.
Davenport is now a witness for the attorney general’s office. According to the indictments, an attorney general investigator testified before the grand jury Tuesday.
The abuse, Davenport told the Bristol Herald Courier, was not a secret among nursing home staff.
“When I talked to the rest of [the nurses], they said this has been going on for years,” Davenport said.
Davenport said she complained to her supervisor after seeing the scared woman in the wheelchair in early August 2007. She said she lodged the second complaint later that month after finding Wright sitting next to a blind patient in bed.
That patient’s robe had been pushed up, exposing her lower body, Davenport said. She said the aide was inappropriately touching the patient, and himself.
Davenport said she quit soon after that incident.
“You look at those people every day in the face knowing they’re getting abuse and you can’t do anything because nobody’s got your back,” Davenport said. “I don’t want to go back to nursing.”
mowens@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2549
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