NURSE’S AIDE ACCUSED OF SEX ABUSE

Three nursing home residents at Brentwood allegedly assaulted by uncertified employee

By Paul L eighton Staff Writer

DANVERS — Three residents of the Brentwood Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center were sexually abused by a nurse’s aide who was allowed to work despite not being certified, according to a government report.

The report said the uncertified aide was left alone on a unit at the Danvers nursing home for about an hour during an overnight shift last summer and abused three residents in their rooms in separate incidents. One of the victims was taken to the emergency room and admitted to the hospital.

Court records identify the alleged assailant as John Benson Bueh, 51, a former Danvers resident who now lives in Keene, New Hampshire. He has been charged with rape, assault to rape, and indecent assault and battery on a disabled person over 60. Bueh is due back in Salem District Court for a probable cause hearing on Jan. 19, according to the

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The alleged assaults took place in the early morning hours of June 25 at Brentwood, a 149-bed nursing home located at 56 Liberty St. in Danvers. According to a complaint inspection report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, three residents said Bueh — whom the report identified only as “Nurse Aide #1 — inserted his fingers in their genital areas, and two of them said he also touched their breasts. Danvers police responded to Bentwood at about 4 a.m. after one of the alleged victims called 911.

The government report said staff at Brentwood failed to immediately report the allegations of sexual abuse to the facility’s administrator. The reports also said the facility failed to conduct a background check before Bueh was allowed to work. Brentwood was fined $30,830.

In a statement to The Salem News, Brentwood administrator Robert Fondi said Bueh was a temporary employee provided by a staffing agency. Fondi said Brentwood holds the staffing agency “fully accountable, as it failed its basic duty of providing credentialed, vetted staff to our center.”

Bueh was charged with rape in 2016 after a woman accused him of assaulting her in Topsfield, according to police records. The charges were eventually dismissed.

In the state report, the owner of the staffing agency acknowledged that she sent Bueh to Brentwood knowing he was not certified as a nurse’s aide. Fondi said Brentwood has severed its relationship with the staffing agency. A spokesman for Brentwood declined to provide the name of the agency.

In the statement, Fondi said Brentwood has a fourstar quality rating from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and “places the highest priority on the health, safety and welfare of the residents in our community, and is in compliance with all regulations.”

Brentwood, however, has a below-average overall rating from the federal agency on its nursing home website. The facility also scores in the bottom 4% of nursing homes in Massachusetts, according to the state’s nursing home performance tool.

Brentwood is owned by Tryko Partners, a real estate investment group based in New Jersey, and is operated as a for-profit business. The facility has been fined four times by the federal government in the last three years for serious health or fire safety violations, according to the Medicare.gov website.

In 2019, government inspectors concluded that Brentwood failed to protect residents after residents reported several instances of verbal and physical abuse, including choking and being dragged into a room and left alone.

According to stat e and police reports, Bueh assaulted the three women late Friday night and early Saturday morning during the overnight shift on June 24 and 25. Bueh began assaulting one of the residents while she was asleep, and another when he was assisting her with a bed pan, according to the reports.

In an interview with Danvers police detectives, Bueh said he was was cleaning the groin area of one of the residents after she had soiled the bed. In the other two incidents, he said he was preventing one woman from falling off the bed and helping another adjust her position on her bed.

Bueh told the government inspector that he was left alone on the unit for about an hour because the other two staff members who were working the overnight shift took a break at the same time.

Scott Gleason, the attorney representing Bueh, could not be reached for comment.

A nurse practitioner at Brentwood told the government inspector that the three alleged victims were “reliable and credible” and that she believed their reports of sexual abuse. The nurse practitioner said one of the victims was “shaking, crying, and looked very traumatized” when she met with the resident two days after the alleged assault. The resident who was taken to the emergency room was admitted to the hospital after becoming “agitated and acutely psychotic, with hallucinations,” according to the report.

Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly. Staff Writer Julie Manganis contributed to this story.