Print edition: 
Like anybody else, registered sex offenders need access to long-term care when illness or disability necessitates it. But state officials should decide whether it’s wise for such offenders to live among vulnerable Kansans in nursing homes and, if so, whether more disclosure should be required. As it is, the privacy of offenders appears to trump the safety of other patients, staff and visitors.
The uncomfortable subject came to light in an article by Hurst Laviana in the Sunday Eagle revealing that seven registered sex offenders were living at Wichita Nursing Center at 2840 S. Hillside before the state revoked its license over numerous violations. The Eagle also found that, according to the state’s registered offender database, a dozen other such offenders — individuals convicted of crimes ranging from rape to aggravated indecent liberties with a child under 14 to lewd and lascivious behavior — were living in nursing homes around the state.
The article prompted questions that are hard to answer, at least in part because of privacy laws: How did four sex offenders from Oklahoma end up in a Wichita nursing home? Why would nine sex offenders statewide in their 40s and 50s need the level of care found in nursing homes, which most often serve the frail elderly? (In 2006 the Government Accountability Office found that 57 percent of 700 sex offenders living in nursing homes nationwide were younger than 65.) Where in Kansas and Missouri have the seven offenders in the Wichita center since moved?
When this issue comes up, someone always argues that an offender ill or disabled enough to need a nursing home probably poses no threat. But that’s small comfort when the resident at risk is your loved one. And as Wes Bledsoe, a national advocate of nursing home regulation based in Oklahoma, has argued: “When you put predators in with prey, someone’s going to get bit.”
Especially amid the ongoing downturn and state budget pinch, it’s hard to imagine the Kansas Legislature following Oklahoma’s good intentions and passing a law to provide a nursing home (unbuilt so far) exclusively for those convicted of sex crimes.
So it likely will come down to disclosure. State and national offender registries are available to anyone online ( www.accesskansas.org/kbi/ro.shtml ). But is that enough transparency? Shouldn’t nursing homes be required to check the database before they admit a sex offender, and then advise other residents and potential residents of the offenders’ presence?
In any case, the issue of what to do about sex offenders in nursing homes is due some attention in Topeka, including from the 2012 Legislature.
As state Rep. Bob Bethell, R-Alden, told The Eagle: “We want to make sure they get the care they need, but we also want to make sure individuals in nursing facilities get the protection they need.”
Kansans seeking long-term care for vulnerable loved ones shouldn’t have to wonder whether they will be sharing a room or wing with a rapist or child molester.
