![]() ![]() ![]() The Associated Press does not identify people who have been sexually assaulted unless they consent to being named. Another resident died after swallowing five surgical gloves.Ĭruz’s mother, referred to in the lawsuit as I.C., is living in a different facility today. A number of residents had died under unusual circumstances, including a 21-year-old quadriplegic patient whose body temperature spiked when he was left outside in the sun for four hours without fluids, the lawsuit said. In the 1980s, the family had no idea the Monroe Developmental Center, which was closed by the state in 2013, had multiple incidents of resident abuse.Īt least 10 staff members had been identified as pedophiles and rapists from 1976-1985, including supervisors, security guards and volunteers. In 2019, she brought her findings to police, who confirmed the man had worked at the facility but said too much time had passed to bring charges. She identified the girl’s father and found through searching online that he had lived in Rochester, not far from the Monroe Developmental Center, at the time of her birth. One of them showed a girl whose eyes resembled her own. Infuriated by what the records had shown, Cruz undertook genetic testing through and matched with biological relatives on her father’s side in Virginia. “Likes men of color, strips, sometimes yells, jumps, eats very fast,” wrote one caretaker - the man Cruz now believes to be her father. She received progress notes from her mother’s time at Monroe Developmental Center, which revealed a series of injuries before and during the pregnancy - a bite mark on her breast, cross-shaped bruise on her shoulder blade, a 9-inch (23-centimeter) abrasion on her back, the lawsuit said. Her lawyers said she started by requesting records from municipalities and the state regarding her mother’s care. The lawsuit was only possible because New York enacted a law last year temporarily setting aside the statute of limitations for litigation over sexual assaults from long ago.Ĭruz’s search for her birth story began about four years ago. “The facts surrounding her birth were far more shocking and grotesque than her family had realized,” her lawyers wrote in the suit, filed against the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, the state agency that oversees state-run facilities.Ĭriminal charges are no longer possible because of legal deadlines that long ago expired. Moreover, Cruz also learned through her own sleuthing that no police report was ever filed, no employees were interviewed and no action was ever taken by administrators, the lawsuit said. He was an employee of the facility, not a resident, according to a lawsuit she filed this week. Nearly four decades later, Cruz says she has solved the mystery of her father’s identity herself, partly by using a mail-order DNA test and a popular genealogy database. A woman born to a severely disabled resident of the facility in 1986 has filed a lawsuit saying her mother was raped by an employee whose abuse was covered up by those in charge. She couldn’t consent to sex, so when she was discovered to be pregnant, it was obvious she must have been raped.įacility administrators told the woman’s family another resident was likely responsible and said they would file a police report and undertake an internal investigation.Ī sign for the Monroe Developmental Center at the Finger Lakes Developmental Disabilities Service Office on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, in Rochester, N.Y. She was 30 but had the mental acuity of a 2-year-old, wore diapers and needed constant care. For a decade, Cruz’s mother had been a resident of a state facility for severely disabled people in Rochester, New York. She was born in 1986 to a mom who couldn’t care for her, or for herself. Magdalena Cruz grew up knowing she owed her very life to a horrid crime. ![]()
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