By Gary Dymski, Newsday
MELVILLE, N.Y. — A Long Island nursing home hired male exotic dancers to perform for its patients, according to a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Suffolk County.
The suit, filed March 13, claims that East Neck Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in West Babylon, N.Y., hired “male strippers to perform” as a regular occurrence for residents.
Howard Fensterman, the attorney representing the nursing home, said a committee of 16 residents voted unanimously for a male stripper to come in to entertain in September 2012.
One dancer was hired to entertain, Fensterman said, and he was paid a fee of $250 by the nursing home.
Fensterman said the residents might be in their 80s but they can decide for themselves what they want for entertainment.
Bernice Youngblood, 85, a resident of the nursing home, and her son, Franklin Youngblood, initiated the lawsuit after the son found a photograph of his mother stuffing cash inside the waistband of a male dancer clad only in white briefs, the suit said.
Franklin Youngblood, of c, N.Y., found the photograph on or about Jan. 5, the suit said, as he visited his mother at the nursing home.
The photograph also shows other residents sitting near Bernice Youngblood as the dancer hovers over her.
When Franklin Youngblood approached a nurse about the incident, the nurse tried to snatch the photograph from him, the suit said.
His brother, Darrell Youngblood, in a telephone call to a nurse on the same day, was told that the scene “depicted in the photograph was part of an entertainment event that was planned, scheduled and executed” by the nursing home “and that it was done in good faith.”
The suit also says “it was a custom, practice, and policy” of the nursing home “to orchestrate such events willingly, and knowingly.”
The suit said Bernice Youngblood “lacks the mental and physical capacity” to competently care for and protect herself, and that the facility breached its “duty of care by purchasing the services of male strippers and directing them to perform various sexually related acts … knowing that its patients did not have the physical or mental capacity to consent to such vile acts or to defend themselves against such vile acts.”
Photo via Flickr, LOLren
