No central registry in Pennsylvania tracks convicted sex offenders placed in nursing care facilities

Story by DEB ERDLEY and
NATASHA LINDSTROM
Tribune-Review

Dec. 30, 2021

When the Tribune-Review began investigating the placement of sex offenders in nursing, personal care and assisted-living homes, it seemed logical to ask some basic questions.

• How many sex offenders are living in these facilities in Pennsylvania?

• In what facilities are they living?

• How many assaults on patients by these offenders have occurred?

No one in state government had answers.

Requests to multiple state agencies, including the state health, human services and corrections departments and state police, revealed there are no public records reflecting how many convicted sex offenders reside in Pennsylvania nursing homes.

In Pennsylvania, the only way to determine whether sex offenders are in a facility is to search a Megan’s Law database maintained online by state police. That can be difficult because of the inconsistencies in how offenders’ information is entered into the database. In some cases, the name of the facility is included; other times it’s not. In some cases, more than one address is listed for an offender.

A spokesman for the state Department of Health, which oversees nursing home licensing and inspections, said the agency does not monitor such issues.

“We don’t have that information,” said spokeswoman Maggi Barton.

Ryan Tarkowski, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said individual parole officers keep track of where their charges — including paroled sex offenders — are housed. But there is no central registry reflecting nursing home placements among paroled sex offenders.

Elder care advocate Wes Bledsoe has been pushing for more than a decade for better accounting of how many sex offenders are living in nursing homes nationwide.

Bledsoe and other experts are sharply critical of the most recent survey performed in 2005 that estimated only about .05% of the nation’s nursing home residents, or about 700, were sex offenders.

Fifteen years ago, he led the only known survey to check the address of every one of the nation’s 15,000-plus nursing homes against sex offender registries in 47 of 50 states. He found 1,600 registered sexual offenders listing nursing homes as their residence, and he said he believes that number has grown dramatically as Baby Boomers on Megan’s Law registries age and require more care. Currently, there are more than 900,000-plus offenders on registries throughout the nation.

Bledsoe said the issue is not new, but states have been slow to address it. He said that inaction feeds the crisis that only stands to worsen.

• State lawmakers vow to better protect care home residents from convicted sex offenders

• Brighton Rehab no stranger to federal, state scrutiny for resident care

• When there’s no room at nursing facilities, convicted sex offenders often land in unregulated boarding homes

• No central registry in Pennsylvania tracks convicted sex offenders placed in nursing care facilities

• How the story was reported