The family of an 84-year-old woman filed a lawsuit against a Missouri nursing home on Thursday, claiming their elderly mother was repeatedly raped and sodomized while employees did nothing to intervene.

KMOV4 reports that Dolores Green’s children allege that while Green was a resident at the Christian Care Home in Ferguson, another resident raped and sodomized her. Green’s daughter, Collette, reportedly made complaints to the nursing home about her mother’s treatment, but the complaints were ignored.

“They failed her, they failed my mother, they failed her totally,” Collette said.

The daughter said she noticed bruising and abrasions around the elderly woman’s private areas that seemed “consistent with rape” while she helped bathe her. Collette took her mother to the hospital where a doctor confirmed that not only had she been sexually assaulted, but she had been sexually assaulted repeatedly.

“Raped, sodomized. And no telling when it started or how long it’s been going on. But we know one thing, it has to stop,” the family’s lawyer, Willie Gary, said.

The family said their mother suffers from physical limitations that prevent her from properly defending herself, as well as Alzheimer’s, which prevented her from telling anyone what happened.

The Ferguson Police Department is currently investigating. However, the family’s other attorney, Richard Banks, said the lawsuit is a “wake up call” to nursing homes in general that neglect residents and allow abuse to happen.

“Unfortunately the system has failed and it’s not just in Miss Green’s case. The system’s failed a number of times across the country, and these are the people, the voiceless,” said attorney Richard Banks.

[Feature Photo: Pixabay]