A nurse at a Phoenix nursing home who had been assigned to care for a woman in a vegetative state who was raped and later gave birth to a child was charged on Wednesday with sexual assault, the police said.
Detectives at the Phoenix Police Department took the nurse, Nathan Sutherland, 36, in for questioning in the case on Tuesday, the police said, and collected a DNA sample from him that matched that of the child, a boy who was born on Dec. 29. Mr. Sutherland was booked on Wednesday morning at the Maricopa County Jail on one charge of sexual assault and one charge of vulnerable adult abuse, the police said.
“Through a combination of good old-fashioned police work, combing through evidence, talking to people and following up on information, combined with the marvels of DNA technology, we were able to identify and develop probable cause to arrest a suspect,” Jeri L. Williams, the Police Department’s chief, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Detectives started to focus on Mr. Sutherland because he was among the medical staff members at the nursing home, Hacienda HealthCare, who were assigned to care for the woman around the time last year that the police believe she was assaulted. The woman had been at the nursing home since 1992 and since then had been in the same condition, unable to communicate or move, according to medical records. A lawyer for the family on Wednesday said they were aware of the arrest but had no comment.
Mr. Sutherland, a licensed practical nurse, had worked at Hacienda since 2012 and was assigned to a unit treating intellectually disabled people since 2014, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. He was fired immediately after the company learned of his arrest, the statement said. It added that Mr. Sutherland had worked his last shift on Sunday.
Nathan SutherlandCreditMaricopa County Sheriff’s Department
Earlier on Wednesday, the police said Mr. Sutherland had been employed by the company since 2011.
On Wednesday, Mr. Sutherland appeared at the Superior Court of Arizona and his bond was set at $500,000, said Bryan Bouchard, a spokesman for the court.
Mr. Sutherland’s lawyer, David W. Gregan, could not immediately be reached for comment.
For nearly a month, the details of the case had gripped the Phoenix region and embroiled Hacienda HealthCare, a major health provider for people with serious disabilities in the state, in scandal as Chief Williams made the case the department’s top investigative concern. The fallout has been immense at Hacienda, forcing the company’s longtime chief executive to resign, and made it the focus of multiple investigations.
“Every member of the Hacienda organization is troubled beyond words to think that a licensed practical nurse could be capable of seriously harming a patient,” company officials said in a statement. “Once again, we offer an apology and send our deepest sympathies to the client and her family, to the community and to our agency partners at every level.”
Mr. Sutherland had “undergone an extensive background check upon hiring,” the company said. That included searching possible criminal history and sex offender registries, as well as checking his personal references and performing a drug screening, the company said in a statement. They added that his nursing license was “current and in good standing.”
The company recently announced it had hired Rick Romley, the former longtime top prosecutor in Maricopa County, to conduct an internal review of the assault and how it could have gone unnoticed.
Since its founding in late 1970s, Hacienda HealthCare has grown into one of the largest private providers of care in Arizona for people with serious cognitive and physical disabilities, operating mostly out of a single campus about six miles south of downtown Phoenix. It runs more than 40 programs through its subsidiaries, which provide services to more than 2,000 people every year, according to the company.
While Hacienda is a private company, some of its operations receive public funding, including $230 million in Medicaid funding since 2010, state records show.
As part of the investigations, detectives started to take DNA samples from all male employees at Hacienda earlier this month. Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman, said that Mr. Sutherland offered a DNA sample only after he was shown a court order to do so and that he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination when he was arrested.
Mr. Sutherland’s DNA sample, taken Tuesday, was “checked, rechecked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked” by the department’s crime laboratory before Mr. Sutherland was arrested, Sergeant Thompson said.
Two doctors who treated patients at Hacienda, including the woman at the center of the case, no longer work at the nursing home. Last week, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, which manages the state’s Medicaid program, notified one of the doctors, Thanh Nguyen, that he had been suspended and could not work at Hacienda or any other Medicaid-supported facility in the state.
The state accused Dr. Nguyen of placing “the health and welfare of A.H.C.C.C.S. members in danger,” according to a letter from the state obtained by The New York Times. The suspension applies only to work with Medicaid-supported centers in the state.
State records show that he also operates a medical consultant group that has a contract with the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services to treat veterans and their families. Neither Dr. Nguyen nor a veterans’ services department spokeswoman responded to requests seeking comment on Wednesday, and efforts to reach the consultant group were unsuccessful.
A second doctor involved in the woman’s treatment resigned last week from Hacienda, the company said on Wednesday. The company declined to publicly identify the person.
Despite a team of doctors and nurses assigned to the woman, the center’s staff members expressed shock that she was pregnant. In a frantic 911 call made at Hacienda on Dec. 29, which the police recently released, a woman reported that a baby had just been delivered and was in distress.
On Wednesday, Sergeant Thompson said that the boy was doing well.
