The state of Arizona is revoking the license of a care facility where an incapacitated woman was raped and gave birth last year after another patient was found to have maggots.
The Arizona Department of Health Services said late Friday that revoking the license of Hacienda Healthcare will give the state more oversight of the facility but will not force it to close.
The agency says the license was revoked “based on findings from a recent survey and an extremely disturbing incident involving inadequate patient care.”
The health department had confirmed Friday that it would investigate the facility after maggots were discovered earlier this week near a surgical incision beneath a patient’s gauze bandage.
A Hacienda spokesman had said the facility is the same location where an incapacitated woman was raped and gave birth in 2018. A nurse who worked at the facility has pleaded not guilty in the case.
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The woman had been in long-term care since the age of three after suffering a near-drowning. She was 29 when she gave birth in December 2018. Lawyers in the ongoing case have argued that she was raped repeatedly before giving birth and may have been pregnant before.
Hacienda’s board of directors initially proposed closing the unit where the rape victim lived, saying it was no longer financially sustainable. The state stepped in to regulate the facility to avoid 37 residents getting displaced.
The CEO of the facility resigned in January.
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