Hardin Home: Sex Offender Nurse Employed Knowingly - TN
That admission came on September 18, 2025, when state inspectors visited Hardin Home following a complaint. At 3:30 in the afternoon, the administrator sat down with investigators. They asked him whether he knew LPN A was on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Sex Offender Registry. He said yes. They asked whether she was currently employed at the facility as a direct care nurse. He said yes. They asked whether he was aware that sex offenders should not be employed at a care facility. He said yes.
Three times. Three questions. Three admissions.
The nurse, identified in inspection records only as LPN A, was placed on the TBI Sex Offender Registry on March 28, 2023, for aggravated statutory rape, exploitation of a minor by electronic means, and solicitation of a minor. Her personnel file at Hardin Home shows she was hired five months later, on August 31, 2023. The criminal background check the facility ran the day before her hire, dated August 30, 2023, came back with her felony convictions listed: aggravated statutory rape, solicitation of a minor, aggravated rape, and soliciting sexual exploitation of a minor.
The facility hired her the next day.
Tennessee Department of Health guidelines are unambiguous on this point. Individuals with certain sex offender convictions are permanently prohibited from working in long-term care facilities. The state classifies sex-related offenses as disqualifying events, meaning no amount of time, no rehabilitation claim, no administrative judgment call changes the outcome. The prohibition is permanent.
Hardin Home's own written policy, a document on abuse, neglect and exploitation that carries no date, states that each resident has the right to be free from abuse and that the facility must not employ individuals who have been found guilty of abuse, neglect, or exploitation by a court of law. The policy goes further, directing facility administration to report to the nursing board any knowledge of court actions indicating an employee is unfit for service.
The administrator had that knowledge. He had it from the beginning, from the background check his own facility ran before her first day of work. There is no indication in the inspection record that he reported anything to the nursing board.
All 24 residents at Hardin Home were cited as affected by the deficiency. LPN A worked as a direct care nurse, meaning she had hands-on contact with the people living there, the elderly and vulnerable residents who came to a licensed long-term care facility because they needed help. They had no way to know the person providing that care had been convicted of aggravated rape and exploitation of a minor. Their families had no way to know. The state had to send inspectors to find out.
The inspection was triggered by a complaint. The report does not say who filed it or what prompted it. What it shows is that once investigators arrived and pulled the background check, the personnel file, and the registry records, the picture assembled itself in minutes. The hire date. The background check date. The registry placement date. The sequence is not complicated. LPN A was convicted, placed on the sex offender registry in March 2023, and hired into a nursing home five months later by an administrator who, by his own account on the day inspectors arrived, understood that was not permitted.
The Tennessee Department of Health's guidelines exist precisely because long-term care residents are among the most vulnerable people in any community. Many have dementia. Many cannot communicate clearly. Many depend entirely on staff for bathing, toileting, and physical care, intimate contact that requires absolute trust. The permanent prohibition on employing sex offenders in these settings is not a bureaucratic formality. It is a protection built on the recognition that exploitation in these environments is both possible and difficult to detect.
Hardin Home's own policy acknowledges the right of every resident to be free from abuse by facility staff. The facility then employed, for reasons the inspection record does not explain, a nurse whose criminal history included the sexual exploitation of a minor, and whose presence on the state's sex offender registry was a matter of public record.
The administrator did not claim ignorance. He did not tell inspectors he had missed something in the background check, or that he had been unaware of the registry, or that someone else had handled the hiring. He said yes, he knew she was on the registry. Yes, she was working there now. Yes, he knew that was not allowed.
What he did not say, at least not in any portion of the record inspectors documented, was what he intended to do about it, or what he had been telling himself for the two years she had been on staff.
LPN A's registry placement was in March 2023. Her hire was August 2023. The inspection was September 2025. By the time investigators sat across from the administrator and began asking questions, she had been working at Hardin Home for more than two years.
The inspection report rates the level of harm as minimal, a designation that reflects the absence of documented harm to a specific resident during the inspection period, not an assessment of the risk that existed throughout those two years. Twenty-four residents received care from a nurse the facility was permanently prohibited from employing. The administrator knew. The background check knew. The registry knew.
The residents did not.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for Hardin Home from 2025-09-18 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Download the official CMS inspection PDF from Medicare.gov
Additional Resources
Data source: This article is based on inspection data downloaded directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via Medicare.gov. CMS releases inspection reports in bulk; we publish the findings as documented by state surveyors in the official Form CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
Plan of correction: The CMS report we receive does not include the facility's plan of correction. Facilities submit plans of correction separately to state survey agencies and those responses may not be reflected in CMS data at the time of publication. The absence of a plan of correction in our data does not mean one was not filed. Readers who want information about corrective steps taken are encouraged to contact the facility directly or their state survey agency.
Corrections may have occurred: Inspection reports reflect conditions observed on the date of the survey. Facilities may have implemented corrections, staffing changes, additional training, or other remediation since the report was issued. We report what CMS provides and encourage readers to seek current information from the facility.
Editorial process: Inspection findings are extracted from CMS source documents and synthesized using AI, reviewed for factual accuracy against the original report by our editorial team.
Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: September 23, 2026 · Our methodology
HARDIN HOME in SAVANNAH, TN was cited for violations during a health inspection on September 18, 2025.
That admission came on September 18, 2025, when state inspectors visited Hardin Home following a complaint.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.