No one has been arrested in connection with the attack, and it’s unclear if police have identified any suspects.
A near-drowning had left the woman in a persistent vegetative state for nearly a decade. Awake but immobile, and apparently unaware, her universe consisted mostly of a room at a Phoenix Hacienda HealthCare facility where she received round-the-clock care.
And so a few days after Christmas, her caretakers were flummoxed when she went into labor.
“From what I’ve been told, she was moaning,” an unidentified source told Phoenix CBS affiliate KPHO. “And they didn’t know what was wrong with her… None of the staff were aware that she was pregnant until she was pretty much giving birth.”
On Dec. 29, with help from one of the facility’s nurses, the patient gave birth to a healthy baby boy, KPHO reported.
The reported birth – and the sexual assault on a vulnerable individual that must have preceded it – has cast a harsh glare on conditions at a nonprofit organization that bills itself as a leading provider of health care for Phoenix’s medically fragile.
