Cancer patient, 82, sexually assaulted at downtown Wichita hospital files lawsuit
A second Ascension Via Christi St. Francis patient who was sexually abused by a man who sneaked into the hospital last month has filed suit.
The suspect, Miguel Rodela, who is criminally charged with assaulting three women in their hospital beds on June 15, allegedly kissed the 82-year-old cancer patient on the mouth and “admitted to touching the inside of (her) vagina ‘a little bit,’” according to the lawsuit, filed Monday in Sedgwick County District Court by Hutton & Hutton Law Firm of Wichita. The firm is also representing a patient who sued Ascension Via Christi Hospitals Wichita Inc. last week, nearly a month after she was reportedly raped by Rodela at the downtown hospital campus.
The Eagle does not identify sexual assault victims by name without their consent.
Wichita police have previously said Rodela followed an employee into the hospital, 929 N. St. Francis, shortly after midnight and posed as medical staff or family of his victims, whom he allegedly assaulted to satiate sexual fantasies.
“This woman’s dignity was stripped away at one of her most vulnerable moments,” Matt Dwyer, attorney at Hutton & Hutton, said referring to the cancer patient, in a Monday news release announcing the second lawsuit.
“And it was allowed (to) happen in that hospital in one of the most upsetting ways possible.”
Ascension Via Christi last week declined to comment on pending litigation in an email but said patient safety was “of the utmost importance” and that it is reviewing security measures and implementing new procedures and workplace safety education for staff.
Both lawsuits allege security lapses, carelessness and negligence on the part of the hospital allowed Rodela to go unnoticed, even though he was wearing street clothes rather than medical garb, until he had already sexually abused patients.
The lawsuit filed last week alleges Rodela was in that patient’s room for a full 21 minutes and that multiple employees didn’t question his lies about being a nursing student, nurse technician and relative until it was too late.
“Whether this was caused by failed security, poor procedures, understaffing, provider negligence or some combination of the above, we will get to the bottom of it,” Hutton & Hutton attorney Blake Shuart said in Monday’s news release.
The 82-year-old woman, identified in Monday’s lawsuit by her initials, is seeking more than $75,000 in damages and a jury trial. She was Rodela’s second alleged victim on June 15.
According to her lawsuit, he entered her room, on the 7th floor after allegedly raping a patient on the 8th floor, and identified himself as a “nurse tech” to legitimate medical staff who interrupted his actions.
The 82-year-old woman woke up to Rodela kissing her, according to the lawsuit, and a nurse was alerted by her bed alarm that the woman “was potentially trying to get out of her bed.”
A nurse technician who checked on her saw Rodela kneeling beside her bed “with both of his hands under her blankets moving around near her thigh area,” the lawsuit alleges.
The nurse technician told a nurse “that there was an unknown male physically embracing” the woman and when the nurse went to check, the nurse saw Rodela leaving a bathroom across the hall from the woman’s room.
Rodela told the nurse he was a “nurse tech” when asked and said the 82-year-old was bleeding from her side, the lawsuit says.
Authorities eventually apprehended him in a room on the 6th floor, where he allegedly sexually assaulted a patient who was incapacitated due to an injury. In that patient’s room, he identified himself as a relative and a certified nursing assistant asked him to help adjust the patient’s body, according to the lawsuit.
Security later caught him on top of the incapacitated patient, lifting up her shirt, the suit says.
Rodela, 28, of Wichita, is charged with rape and attempted rape. The other victims are 47 and 76.
This story was originally published July 17, 2023 at 3:29 PM.
