Posted on 12/12/2005 10:38:36 AM PST by Millee
The family of a blind and deaf 10-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted is speaking out after the former hospice nurse who assaulted her received no jail time. The family says instead of being angry they only feel pity for their daughter's attacker.
Fifty-five-year-old James Philpott was arrested last year after he told coworkers he had sex with an 89-year-old woman and 10-year-old Laura Ward.
Laura died in 2003. It wasn't until a year later when her parents found out she was molested.
Laura, born with a terminal disease, was molested by Philpott while she was a patient at Hospice of St. John in Lakewood.
Philpott admitted to molesting Laura three times and said he did it, so the little girl would feel pleasure before she died.
"It was just very difficult to think that someone could do that to a little child; especially one who couldn't defend herself and couldn't tell anybody," says Janel Ward, Laura's mother.
Despite those feelings, the Wards say they need Philpott out of prison if he is going to change at all.
Philpott was originally sentenced to 16 years to life in prison. The Wards thought that punishment was too severe.
"Wanting someone to be locked up for life, you know, and throw away the key; that makes this whole thing more tragic," Laura's father Doug says.
A judge has since reduced Philpott's sentence to 20 years supervised probation and two years work release.
"He'll never get his life totally back because it's going to follow him, but he does have a chance to fix whatever's in his mind that would make a person do such a horrible thing," says Doug.
The Wards no longer have their daughter, but they hope their decision will honor her memory.
"If he's going to honor her in any way, if he's going to fix it, that's the way he has to do it," Doug says. "He has to change his life around."
The real problem isn't "male nurses", but the lack of reliable national biometric ID system. Nursing homes are full of workers with criminal pasts, but when they apply under an assumed name (sometimes that of another person, so no problem getting SS#, and even job references to check out), there's simply no way of verifying who they really are and what they've done in the past. And most nursing homes can't afford to be picky, or to spend a lot of money doing extensive background checks -- not a whole lot of first rate people applying for graveyard shift jobs cleaning bedpans and soiled diapers, and the patients aren't exactly in a position to pay big bucks or to demand better care.
The Asylum has no walls.
Obviously, this family suffers from terminal"Liberosis". Their brain's capacity to think rationally and logically, has been totally perverted.
The only way to perhaps shock them back into realty, would be to force them to take in the perpetrator of their daughter's rape: So that we can all see just how effective their superior liberal values will influence his ability to change.
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