At 8:30 p.m. on Christmas Day 2009, nurse Tiffany Gourley was called to a room at the Windmill Manor nursing home in Coralville, Iowa. She found a 78-year-old male resident who had just had intercourse with an 87-year-old woman. The man, a former college professor, was divorced. The woman, a retired secretary, was married. Both had dementia.
The man was a retired college professor and author who loved University of Iowa sports. He had dementia, colon cancer and arthritis. Two documents filed with the state described him as “sexually assertive.” Etter [the nursing director], 52, called him “a ladies’ man,” adding, “I never thought he was inappropriate, just very friendly.” She said his family, including two daughters and three sons, liked having him at Windmill Manor because it was convenient for visits.
The woman was a former school district secretary who liked to garden. She was admitted to Windmill Manor in early 2009. Her husband lived nearby. Her son, now 59, had her power of attorney and visited more often than her husband, Etter said.
The situation wasn’t entirely a surprise. The two had been friendly, holding hands and telling stories, since the man was admitted the week before. The dementia unit coordinator told regulators that the two “gravitated toward” each other, and that the woman called the man by her husband’s name and was calmed by his presence.
“It ruined my life,” the director of nursing at the time, Karen Etter, said in an interview. She was fired.
“It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to live through,” said Steve Drobot, the former Windmill Manor administrator. He was fired, too.
