Nursing Home Might Appeal Fine for Abuse : Elderly care: The $10,000 penalty was levied after a nurse’s aide allegedly raped a patient. Officials maintain that the home is not responsible.

Autumn Hills Convalescent Home officials said they probably will appeal a $10,000 fine levied by Los Angeles County officials after an elderly patient was allegedly raped at the facility by a nurse’s aide.

Officials representing Autumn Hills have argued that the Glendale nursing home is not responsible for the actions of employee Roy Alton Seaton, a 45-year-old Burbank resident who had a prior conviction for a sexual offense that Autumn Hills officials were unaware of.

Seaton allegedly attacked an 82-year-old patient who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He has pleaded not guilty and is in County Jail awaiting an Aug. 14 preliminary hearing.

On July 5, about a week after the alleged attack, the county Department of Health Services fined the home $10,000 because a resident suffered physical and sexual abuse, and $1,000 because Seaton’s background was not checked properly before he was hired, said Spencer Barr, an assistant supervisor with county Health Services.

Although both citations remain on the nursing home’s record, the lesser fine was dropped after the home agreed to ensure that in the future the references of job applicants would be checked to verify they had state certification for the job.

Attorneys for Autumn Hills, however, argue that the home should not be blamed because its operators must depend on a system for obtaining and sharing information about nurse’s aides that is too complex. It requires them to know about an employee’s past but makes it very difficult for them to obtain the information, the attorneys said.

Seaton’s criminal record dates to September, 1983, when he was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child and put on six years’ probation. The conviction, however, did not directly threaten Seaton’s livelihood because it did not involve a patient or occur at a nursing home.

Under state law, a convicted child molester can work as a nurse’s aide--provided the offense did not occur at a nursing facility or involve a patient, county officials said. If a nurse’s aide is convicted of abuse or neglect of a nursing home patient, the offense is automatically reported to the state Department of Health Services, which revokes the aide’s certification, said Mary Louise Mock, a state Health Services assistant deputy director.

Seaton, who was certified as a nurse’s aide in 1979, joined Golden State Colonial Convalescent Hospital in North Hollywood in October, 1986. His wife, also a nurse’s aide, got a job there too, said Bette Zimmer, the home’s administrator.

In an interview, Zimmer said that Seaton and his wife were excellent employees and that she did not know when she hired Seaton that he had been convicted of child molestation. Zimmer said she followed standard procedures in hiring him: She called state Health Services to make sure his certification was valid, and she called his references to verify his former employment.

Neither method, however, offered any substantial information about his past, Zimmer said. Industry and county officials said that generally is the case: Former employers, fearful of lawsuits, are reluctant to give out information about employees, even to other nursing homes. And the state certification hot line tells only whether an aide’s certification is valid.

There is no uniform system nursing homes can use to obtain information about employees’ criminal backgrounds and in many instances, the information is confidential, said Rod Leonard, in charge of the district attorney’s nursing home and dependent care branch.

“You can’t just call me up and say, ‘Rod, can you check my boyfriend’s records to see if he has any criminal past,’ ” Leonard said. “There’s a right to privacy involved in criminal records.”

Zimmer said Seaton left Golden State in April, 1988, for a better paying job at Riverdale Convalescent Center in Glendale. Like Zimmer, Kathleen Reinke, then administrator of Riverdale, said she did not know of Seaton’s conviction when he was hired. But several months later, she received anonymous complaints that he was treating residents roughly and heard rumors that he was on probation for a sex offense.

Reinke, who now administers Brighton Convalescent Center in Pasadena, said she confronted Seaton about the complaints and rumors. She said Seaton told her that he had been accused of child molestation, but that the charge was unsubstantiated. Reinke said she suspended him from resuming work until he could provide proof from a legal authority that it was safe for him to work with the elderly.

In November, 1988, she got such a letter--from Seaton’s probation officer. The letter acknowledged Seaton’s offense and said there was no documented evidence that suggested that child molesters posed a threat to ill or elderly adults, according to Carol Koelle, regional director of the county probation department.

Because the complaints seemed to be unsubstantiated and because the law does not prohibit convicted child molesters from working as nurse’s aides, Reinke allowed him to return to his job, she said.

Seaton, whose probation expired in April, 1989, left Riverdale in July and was hired at Autumn Hills in August. Months later, during an early morning shift on June 27, a supervisor allegedly caught Seaton raping and sodomizing a resident. Seaton was arrested a day later and charged with three felony counts of sexual assault. He also was fired, said Tami Smason, Autumn Hills’ attorney.

Smason said Seaton had been known as a “helpful and fine” employee. The home had no way of knowing about his criminal record because he lied when he wrote on his job application that he had never been convicted of a felony, she said.

Smason refused to say whether Autumn Hills checked Seaton’s references. County officials, however, said the home failed to do so. If it had, the officials charged, it would have learned about his past and considered it in the decision to hire him.

“The law says that each facility should establish personnel policies and procedures that should include verification of license, credentials and references,” Barr said. “Yes, it’s up to each facility to decide how to do it . . . but if you’re not doing it thoroughly, you take a chance.”

Obtaining information about nurse’s aides may become easier. All states, including California, are establishing hot lines that will offer more information about nurse’s aides, such as whether a conviction or substantiated complaints of abuse ever have been lodged against an aide, Mock said.

Comprehensive criminal records are available through the U.S. Department of Justice for some kinds of care facilities, such as homes for the developmentally disabled. A bill by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly (D-Sacramento) pending in the Legislature would give nursing homes the same access to those records.

But some industry officials said they will oppose the bill if it means that homes will have to employ costly, time-consuming measures to obtain records.

“We’re in a segment of the labor market where people aren’t coming in with fat resumes and a lot of work experience. There are always problems ascertaining prior work history,” said Dave Helmsin, program director for the California Assn. of Health Facilities, a trade group for most of the 1,250 nursing homes in the state. “Still, we can’t support anything that seriously inhibits our ability to recruit employees.”