Records show at least seven sex offenders are or have been in North Dakota nursing homes in recent years, according to the state Health Department, Department of Human Services, the state sex offender Web site and Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
* Dunseith Resident 5: A man whose predatory habits were known in the community years before he entered the Dunseith Community Nursing Home. He engaged in at least 34 assaults on female residents of the home in a little more than a year. After state Health Department inspectors documented the extent of the abuse in March 2004, he was moved to a Minot hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, returned to Dunseith temporarily and then, less than a month after the inspection, transferred to a special unit at McIntosh Manor, McIntosh, Minn. He has since died.
* Dunseith Resident No. 9: Had a pattern of sexual assaults on women in the Dunseith Community Nursing Home, as documented by state inspectors in March 2004. He has since died.
* New Salem: State reports from November and December 2004 show that a convicted sex offender was living in Marian Manor when the staff asked to meet with the state nursing home ombudswoman because they didn't believe he was incapacitated, as a doctor had advised them. Workers there complained they were afraid to care for him and that he was verbally abusive. The ombudswoman's reports say he was moved to the State Hospital in Jamestown, but do not indicate whether he was civilly committed there.
* Fort Totten: James P. Cavanaugh, 60, lives in the Elderly Center at Fort Totten on the Spirit Lake Reservation. He participated in multiple rapes of two women in 1964 and 1967 in Ramsey County and also a kidnapping in Montana in 1977. The state Health Department's nursing home surveyors have no jurisdiction over the Fort Totten center because it is on a reservation.
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* Langdon: The Maple Manor Care Center was pressured to take in a local sexual predator, Lloyd Edward Hall last year, but refused.
Cavanaugh and Hall can be found on the state sex offenders Web site, www.ndsexoffender.com , which displays about 200 classified as the most dangerous sex offenders or those required to stay registered for life. The state has more than 800 registered sex offenders listed with the Bureau of Criminal Investigations. The list is available to the public upon request.
The full list shows three other sex offenders of low or moderate risk of reoffending are living in nursing homes, but they did not appear among the state ombudsman's office reports of problem residents:
* Enderlin: James Robert Johnson, Mary Hill Manor Nursing Home. Convicted in Ward County on Sept. 23, 1999, of gross sexual imposition. Sentenced to 10 years with five years suspended. Moderate risk.
* Mayville: Jerome Ardell Dammen, Luther Memorial Home, convicted of gross sexual imposition in Traill County on Oct. 27, 2004, given a suspended sentence and five years of probation. Low risk.
* Walhalla: Roy Al Slagerman, Pembilier Nursing Center, convicted of gross sexual imposition in Pembina County on June 5, 1996. Received a one-year sentence, suspended for eight years. Low risk.
