The Hacienda sexual abuse case involving a woman in a permanent vegetative state impregnated in a care home is far from over.

The shocking case came to light on December 29, 2018, when a nurse at the Hacienda HealthCare facility in Phoenix, Arizona, discovered that a female resident was in the process of giving birth.

The news caused a national uproar when it became known that the 29-year older woman had been in a permanent vegetative state for the past 26 years.

During all this time, she had been a resident at the Phoenix facility. A male nurse at the facility was arrested the following month after DNA testing showed a match with the incapacitated woman’s baby boy.

The trial of Nathan Sutherland was postponed several times during the Covid-19 pandemic, and many questions remain unanswered to this day?

Were there other pregnancies, and how on earth nobody suspected she was carrying a child for nine long months?

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10 /10 Vegetative State Or Intellectually Challenged?

Soon after the news broke, the parents of the 29-year older woman claimed their daughter was not actually in a vegetative state.

A person in a permanent vegetative state has no personal awareness, but the Hacienda woman is, in fact, capable of responding to sounds and making facial gestures.

She also has some ability to move her head and limbs, and she cries when in pain. Either way, it’s obvious she was in no condition to give consent, so she was raped.

9 /10 Catastrophic Seizures

The name of the woman was never released to protect her privacy. It is known about her that she was born in the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in 1989.

Severe seizures brought about the condition she suffered since she was two months old, although the exact cause of these seizures was not revealed.

As a result, she has a severe intellectual disability and is bedridden. She was admitted to the long-term Phoenix facility at the age of 3 and has lived there until the birth of her baby.



8 /10 Sexual Abuse Concerns

Contrary to what one might believe, the woman was not abandoned in a care home. Her family visited regularly and had expressed fears their daughter might be abused years before.

It seems that someone on the staff told them the woman might have been inappropriately touched. The parents requested that only female nurses be assigned to their daughter’s care, but their pleas were ignored.

7 /10 83 Missed Opportunities

According to the lawsuit filed by the victim’s parents, the staff at the Hacienda HealthCare facility missed 83 opportunities to spot the pregnancy.

For one, the woman’s periods had stopped. At the same time, the nurses noticed a “large and hard mass” in her abdomen, which they did not investigate.

They assumed the woman suffered from constipation and gave her laxatives and at least one enema.

The court document also alleges she was examined on 24 occasions, and they discovered her private parts were swollen. Still, they made nothing of it. As for the weight gain, the staff reduced her calorie intake.

6 /10 Shocking Discovery

Imagine the moment a nurse walks into the patient’s room to change her, only to discover she was in the last stages of the delivery. The nurse was shocked when she “saw a baby’s head in her briefs.”

The staff immediately called 911 as it seemed the baby was stuck. During the call, a person can be heard screaming that “Baby’s turning blue!”

The baby was not breathing when it was born and had to be renewed. Eventually, the woman was transported to the Maricopa County Medical Center, where she and her baby received medical care.

5 /10 Unassisted Birth

According to her parents, the woman was capable of thrashing her limbs when she was in distress, and she cried in pain, so it’s impossible to understand how nobody noticed she was giving birth.

Being her first delivery, it must have lasted for a few hours. All this time, the woman did not receive any pain medication. If she had any awareness, that must have been a deeply traumatic time.

4 /10 The Orphan

The boy is now in the care of his maternal grandmother. The family has maintained absolute privacy, and they have never spoken with the media.

The boy did survive that traumatic birth, but there are some concerns for his future as his mother did not receive any prenatal care.

On top of that, she was on various medications, including phenobarbital, a barbiturate that might affect the child’s development.

And, he’ll have to go through life knowing his mother is incapable of recognizing him, and his father is a rapist.

3 /10 Multiple Rapes And Pregnancies

After the birth, the woman underwent a thorough medical exam, which revealed some horrible facts. According to the doctors, she was raped more than once, both anally and vaginally.

Also, the doctors believe she might have been pregnant several times and probably miscarried without anyone realizing it.

Experts also suspect the woman might have been able to recognize her aggressor by his body odor and experience extreme distress knowing she would be abused again.

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2 /10 The Monster

A married man and father of four, Nathan Sutherland was 36 years old at his arrest in January 2020. According to court documents, he had access to the victim hundreds of times between 2012 and 2018.

His colleagues noticed that he was very stressed in 2018 but assumed it was caused by the fact he was going through a messy divorce.

In retrospect, he must have known he’d got the woman pregnant and that there was a high risk his crime would be discovered.

1 /10 $45 Million Lawsuit

The parents of the woman have sued the state of Arizona for a record $45 million in damages for the tremendous suffering their daughter went through at the Hacienda HealthCare home, which was a state facility.

The facility was closed soon after the dramatic events of December 29, 2018.

The other residents were transferred elsewhere, which is quite a blessing since there’s a lot of evidence they were neglected to the point that they had maggot-infested wounds.

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