former suburban Chicago nursing home worker charged with raping a profoundly brain-damaged resident who later gave birth changed his plea to guilty Wednesday in DuPage County Circuit Court.
Authorities said Reynaldo Brucal Jr., 19, of Schaumburg, raped the 23-year-old woman, who suffers from cerebral palsy, at the Alden Village Health Facility for Children and Young Adults in Bloomingdale early last year.
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.
Bakalis set a presentencing hearing for Dec. 13, at which time he said he would set a sentencing date for sometime in January.
The baby’s mother, who cannot walk or talk, and her twin sister had lived at Alden Village since they were 10 but were removed from the facility when the pregnancy was discovered, five weeks before the baby was born.
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.
Brucal, a nurse’s aide, worked at Alden Village from September 2004 until his arrest Nov. 1, 2005.
“What I find especially disturbing … is that he sexually assaulted a severely handicapped woman who was unable to fight back or to even communicate to others what had happened,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph E. Birkett said in a statement.
The Illinois Department of Public Health fined Alden Village $10,000 for lacking oversight and mishandling its investigation of the incident.
State officials said the facility failed to conduct a complete investigation into the alleged assault, and treated the swelling of the woman’s abdomen as constipation despite nursing staff reports that said she showed signs of pregnancy.
As a result, 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.
As highlighted in bold, that’s what makes the matter even more saddening than it is. How sick do you have to be to do something like that. If you’re really that desperate, go to your nearby hooker street.
