Soliciting Rape

The News-Gazette had a very sick and disturbing article on how Channing J. Butler, an employee of Bickford Senior Living facility Bickford Cottage, was caught and arrested for soliciting others to have sex with female residents so that he could videotape them. Butler allegedly wanted the men to perform both oral and vaginal sex on the women.  Bickford is an assisted living and memory care facility for seniors. The victims were ages 88, 90 and 95. One of the women has since died.

“It happened in the middle of the night but at the time it happened, they were awake or conscious. It’s not like there was no reaction,” First Assistant State’s Attorney Steve Ziegler said of the victims, whom he described as having profound memory problems and being unable to be interviewed by police.  It appears that the men Butler hired never consummated sex acts with the three elderly women, but not for lack of trying.  “They tried to do this and the victims kept pushing them away,” he said.

“They were all in the same area and he was an employee who was supposed to be working. He was doing this during his employment hours. There were no other employees around” Ziegler said.

One of the men Butler allegedly hired to perform the sex acts “got a guilty conscience” and turned himself in to the police. Police learned that Butler recruited the men to have sex with the women so that he could videotape the interactions.  Police obtained Butler’s cellphone and retrieved still images and text messages of the crimes.  Ziegler said of the other three men involved in doing Butler’s bidding, two are currently in prison and police have been unable to find the third.

“He’s paying them so he can do the videos, which we believe he may have been reselling. It’s not entirely clear if it was for his own sexual gratification or for reselling or both,” said the prosecutor.

Butler also worked for the Champaign County Nursing Home as a certified nurse assistant from November 2012 to April 2013, according to county records.