A British nursing home is on the defensive after local authorities learned it may have regularly hired prostitutes for its residents.
According to The Times of London, Chaseley nursing home in Eastbourne, England, is accused of regularly scheduling visits with sex workers, who meet residents in a special room and put a "special red sock" on the door for privacy. Caregivers are said to check on the rooms every fifteen minutes, the paper reported.
Chasely caters mostly to ex-soldiers.
Manager Sue Wyatt told British tabloid The Sun that a "third party consultant" handled the procurement of the sex workers, who helped residents with their "needs."
Helena Barrow, whom The Sun says is a Chaseley ex-manager, clarified further: Professionals offer a service that is both therapeutic to residents "frustrated" by "primeval needs" and helpful for the staff, she told The Sun.
“If you have a resident who is groping staff, one way of resolving that problem is to get a sex worker in who is trained to deal with that situation," Barrow said. "The fact is sex workers are allowed by law to sexually enable people but care workers are not."
The Inquisitr reports that the East Sussex County Council is nevertheless looking into the practice to make sure residents are not being harmed.
The council released a statement saying, “We will examine our concerns through the Pan-Sussex Multi-Agency Policy and Procedures for Safeguarding Adults at risk. This has the potential to place vulnerable East Sussex residents at risk of exploitation and abuse.”
In 2008, Bloomberg reported on a similar practice in a nursing home in Denmark. The Kildegaarden residence had made several calls to sex workers over a course of several years, according to the news site, but the practice was greeted with skepticism by some politicians.
Slate discussed sexual activity and sexual expression in nursing homes as part of the magazine's 2007 "Sex issue," writing that a survey found that year about a quarter of Americans between 75 and 85 were having sex. The article continues thus, in part:
There's no reason to think that nursing-home residents would be any less frisky, if left to their own devices. After all, we're talking about a mixed-sex population living in close quarters with almost endless amounts of free time. Already, staffers routinely field patient requests for personal lubricants, pornographic magazines, larger-size beds, and prescriptions for Viagra. And that's with the 1.6 million elderly residents who came of age before the sexual revolution. Within a few decades, nursing homes will be replete with the desires and expectations of almost 7 million liberated baby boomers.
Earlier this month, The Sun reported on a brothel planned and designed specifically for disabled clients who can travel outside the home. The non-profit Para Doxies in Milton Keynes, England, will offer transportation and will be wheelchair accessible.
“People have the same sexual urges whether they’re disabled or not. Everyone deserves to experience and enjoy sexual contact," said former madam Becky Adams, who will head up Para Doxies.