Union Nursing: Sexual Abuse Allegation Mishandled - MO

Nobody stopped him. Nobody told him he was suspended. Nobody had told him anything at all.

That is what federal inspectors found when they arrived at Union Nursing, a 1080 Marie Lane facility in Union, Missouri, following a complaint filed about the incident. What they documented was not a single lapse but a cascade of failures by the facility's director of nursing, a person the administrator later acknowledged was in charge during his or her own absence and should have known exactly what to do.

The director of nursing, identified in the inspection report only as DON, contacted the charge nurse the morning of October 22 to ask questions about what had happened the night before. That was a reasonable first step. What followed was not.

The charge nurse, Licensed Practical Nurse D, said the DON called with questions about the accused aide's interactions with the resident during the night shift. But the DON never asked LPN D to put anything in writing. No questionnaire. No written statement. The conversation happened and then, apparently, so did nothing else.

The accused aide, Certified Nursing Assistant A, described the same gap from the other side. The DON had not told CNA A that a resident had made a sexual allegation against him or her. The DON had not told CNA A that he or she was suspended from work pending investigation. So CNA A came back on October 22, clocked in for the day shift, and worked for twelve hours alongside the resident who had accused him or her the night before.

There was a third employee who had worked that night and seen nothing in writing asking for his or her account. Certified Medication Technician C had been on shift from 6:15 in the morning until 12:21 the following morning on October 21, a long stretch that overlapped directly with the hours in question. Inspectors interviewed CMT C on October 28. He or she said no one from the facility had ever contacted him or her. No interview. No questionnaire. No written statement requested.

The resident's physician was at the facility on October 23. Staff did not tell the doctor about the allegation until October 24, a full three days after the resident had reported being sexually abused. The physician told inspectors he or she would have expected to be notified when the incident occurred, particularly if facility policy directed staff to do so. The doctor had been physically present on the premises and still wasn't told.

The administrator, interviewed on October 28, did not defend any of it.

He or she said the DON should have suspended CNA A immediately, before the investigation was complete. The physician should have been notified shortly after the allegation was made, not days later. Every staff member who worked the night shift on October 21 should have been interviewed or asked to provide a written statement. The administrator said all of this plainly. None of it had happened.

What the inspection report captures is a director of nursing who appears to have understood that something serious had occurred and then failed at each subsequent decision point. The DON did make phone calls. The DON did ask the charge nurse some questions. But the DON did not suspend the accused aide, did not inform the accused aide of the allegation, did not collect written accounts from witnesses, did not notify the treating physician for three days, and did not prevent CNA A from returning to the floor.

The result was that a resident who had reported being sexually abused spent at least part of October 22 in a facility where the person they accused was working a twelve-hour day shift.

The inspection was completed November 19, 2025. The deficiency was cited under F0607, which covers the prevention and investigation of abuse. Inspectors assessed the level of harm as minimal harm or potential for actual harm, and noted that few residents were affected. The complaint number assigned to the case is 2651547.

The harm classification reflects the regulatory framework inspectors apply, not necessarily the experience of the resident who made the allegation. A person living in a nursing home who reports sexual abuse by a staff member and then sees that staff member return to work the next day, with no visible consequence and no indication that anyone has been told, is not experiencing a situation that residents of nursing homes should have to navigate.

The administrator's own account of what should have happened makes clear that the facility's leadership understood the standard. The DON was in charge. The DON had the authority to suspend CNA A. The DON had the contact information for the physician. The DON had access to every employee who worked that night shift and could have asked each of them to sit down and write out what they saw.

None of those employees were asked. LPN D, who was the charge nurse that night and one of the most obvious people to interview, was not given a form. CMT C, who worked more than eighteen hours that day and into the night, was not contacted at all, not that day, not the next day, not until a federal inspector asked him or her about it a week later.

The investigation, such as it was, left the accused aide uninformed of the allegation against him or her, left the night shift staff unquestioned, left the physician in the dark for three days, and left the resident in a building where CNA A was still working.

The administrator said the DON should have done all of it differently. The administrator was not there that night. The DON was.

Full Inspection Report

The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Union Nursing from 2025-11-19 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.

Additional Resources

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