Sentence for rapist of nursing home resident

A former nursing aide who admitted raping and impregnating a profoundly disabled and defenseless woman at a Bloomingdale nursing home three years ago was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison.

Reynaldo Brucal Jr., 20, pleaded guilty in November to aggravated criminal sexual assault of the then-23-year-old woman, who has cerebral palsy, is brain-damaged and has the mental capacity of a 3-year-old. She was in his care at Alden Village Health Facility for Children and Young Adults when the attack occurred in 2004.

Brucal, who is not a U.S. citizen, has been in DuPage County Jail since his 2005 arrest.
After serving his sentence, he will be deported to his native Philippines.

Staff at the nursing home, where the victim and her twin sister had lived for 13 years, discovered she was expecting in June 2005 when she was more than 28 weeks’ pregnant. A baby girl was delivered by Caesarean section in July 2005.

The twins, who cannot speak or function independently, have been moved to another area nursing facility, and their family has filed a civil lawsuit against Alden that is pending.

The facility also has been fined $10,000 by the Illinois Department of Public Health for lack of oversight and mishandling of the investigation.

According to the probation department’s pre-sentencing report, Brucal admitted assaulting the woman because he was “bored.”

But Brucal, who began working at Alden in September 2004 and was 17 at the time of the attack, “didn’t believe he did anything wrong,” Berlin said.

Initially, Brucal denied sexual contact but was arrested in November 2005 after admitting such contact, claiming a latex glove he used as a condom had failed.