GUILTY IL - Reynaldo Brucal for raping, impregnating disabled patient, Bloomingdale, 2004

A severely disabled, brain-damaged woman who was discovered to be pregnant while living in a nursing home has given birth to an apparently healthy baby girl, authorities said...

The woman was scheduled to have a Caesarean section in mid-August, but she had the procedure Wednesday evening at Rush University Medical Center here because she was suffering from a dangerous complication of pregnancy called preeclampsia that affects both mother and child.

The baby, a girl, appears healthy, but is in intensive care, a family member said.

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Now, at age 49, [Cheryl Hale-Crom] is quickly putting together a nursery so she can bring home the newborn she intends to raise as her own.

"I know people say God only gives you what you can handle ... but sometimes I don't know if I feel like that," she said, her eyes tired and bloodshot after a recent day of meetings with lawyers in Chicago...

As she holds her tiny granddaughter now, Hale-Crom feels a familiar rush of fear and worry. Will the baby have the debilitating seizure disorder that her mother and aunt suffered from?...

Hale-Crom also wonders how she will tell her granddaughter about her mother--and father--as she gets older.

"This is just one of these nightmares that's not going to end," said Chicago attorney Ed Fox, who is representing Hale-Crom in her lawsuit....

So far, news from the baby's doctors has been somewhat reassuring, as the newborn has not shown signs of her mother's seizure disorder.

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A former nurse's aide at the facility was charged last week with raping the then-23-year-old disabled woman, who prematurely delivered the baby girl by Caesarean section on July 20, just five weeks after the pregnancy was discovered. The woman's mother is raising the baby girl...

Three staff members also told investigators they suspected the woman was pregnant more than two weeks before she was rushed to the hospital.

On May 24, a worker changing the woman's diaper saw the woman's stomach moving, she told investigators. She put her hand on it and "felt a kick," according to the report. A second staff member walking by the room, the document said, was called in and also reported feeling the woman's stomach move. Another staff member was called into the room and also felt the woman's stomach move, according to the report.

But the report says the primary nurse on staff told the other employees that the woman had been given a suppository that day, which she said might have been causing the movement, and "there was no reason for concern." The nurse also told state investigators that she got angry that employees were spreading rumors about a possible pregnancy, and "told the staff they were going too far," according to the report.

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"A lot of staff at the nursing home were turning a blind eye to it and unwilling to do anything about it," Fox said, adding that Hale-Crom likely would have decided to have the pregnancy aborted if she had known about it earlier.

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Reynaldo Brucal Jr. of the 1000 block of Knollwood Drive in Schaumburg was arrested Tuesday after investigators matched his DNA to that of the baby born to the 23-year-old brain-damaged woman in July, DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett said...

Former employees told investigators that other workers, not just Brucal, had touched female patients inappropriately, said attorney Ed Fox....
The victim's mother, Cheryl Hale-Crom, who is raising her new granddaughter, said she was comforted by the arrest...

Hale-Crom's daughter lived on the first floor of the facility, sharing a room with her similarly disabled twin sister and another young woman. None of the patients can speak or walk. The twins, who have cerebral palsy and use wheelchairs, had been living at the facility for 13 years.

Even though a doctor examined the woman monthly and no menstrual period had been recorded on her charts for several months, the pregnancy was not discovered until she was taken to a hospital because her stomach was swollen, and caregivers thought she might have a problem with her feeding tube, authorities said. By then, she was more than 28 weeks pregnant...

Fox said Hale-Crom, who fears that her granddaughter might suffer from the same seizure disorder discovered in her twin daughters when they were infants, had a scare just this week when the child was admitted to a local hospital with seizure-like symptoms.

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Cheryl Hale-Crom has custody of the 6-month-old baby, who has big, brown eyes, tufts of dark hair and, more troubling, signs of her mother’s disability.

The baby suffers from seizures that used to plague her mother and her mother’s twin sister and has missed certain developmental benchmarks, like rolling over on her own or gripping items in her tiny hands, Hale-Crom, 49, told the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview published in today’s editions.

“I just want her to grow up healthy, but we’re so uncertain about her prognosis,” said Hale-Crom, who did not want to reveal the baby’s name. “I can deal with a little slow, a little behind. But if she’s like her mom, she’s going to have to go into a home. It’s not fair to me. It’s certainly not fair to this baby.

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Cheryl Hale-Crom watched helplessly as her tiny granddaughter's muscles stiffened and spasmed. The baby's big, brown eyes locked onto something far away, and she let out a blood-curdling scream.

Hale-Crom knew all too well what was happening. The baby was in the throes of a seizure. Hale-Crom had seen it before, shortly after the birth of her own twin daughters, Amy Jo and Amanda.

"It's like you're living it all over again, 24 years later," said Hale-Crom, bending down to reposition her granddaughter's head as the baby sat quietly in her Kick & Play. "Everything I went through with Amy and Amanda, I'm going through with her.

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A former suburban Chicago nursing home worker charged with raping a profoundly brain-damaged resident who later gave birth changed his plea to guilty Wednesday.

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In accepting the guilty plea to a count of aggravated criminal sexual assault, Circuit Judge George Bakalis said Brucal faces a sentence ranging from 6 to 30 years in prison....

Bloomingdale police took DNA samples from all the male workers at the nursing home and matched Brucal’s to the infant, who was delivered by emergency Caesarean section on July 20, 2005...

The Illinois Department of Public Health fined Alden Village $10,000 for lacking oversight and mishandling its investigation of the incident...
the woman didn’t receive prenatal care and took anti-convulsive medication until she was seven months pregnant, the agency said.

The victim’s mother now has custody of the baby, and filed a lawsuit last year in Cook County against the facility, the management company, her daughter’s doctor and Brucal.

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A former nursing aide who admitted raping and impregnating a profoundly disabled and defenseless woman at a Bloomingdale nursing home three years ago was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison.

Reynaldo Brucal Jr., 20, of Schaumburg pleaded guilty in November to aggravated criminal sexual assault of the then-23-year-old woman, who has cerebral palsy, is brain-damaged and has the mental capacity of a 3-year-old...

After serving his sentence, he will be deported to his native Philippines, authorities said...
Cheryl Hale-Crom, mother of the victim, did not appear in court Wednesday. But in a statement to Bakalis, she wrote: "I'm glad it's over and justice was served. I never thought a person could be so brutal."

She also told Bakalis her nearly 2-year-old granddaughter appears to be developing the same condition suffered by her twin daughters.

"She has learning disorders and she has seizures," Hale-Crom said. "I am now reliving raising the twins with raising the infant."

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Rayemonde said:

May 2007:



http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-05-31/news/0705301420_1_nursing-victim-sentence


Oh no, poor grandma and poor baby Absolutely horrendous

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