TULSA, Okla. — Investigators with the Tulsa Police Department's Special Victims Unit are looking for possible victims after a registered nurse was arrested and accused of sexually assaulting a patient.
Officers responded to a local hospital last September after a 45-year-old patient said she was sexually assaulted in her room. At the time, the victim underwent a SANE exam, and DNA evidence was collected.
WATCH: SEARCH FOR POSSIBLE VICTIMS: Tulsa RN arrested, accused of sexual assault
James Edward Beaver, an RN, was interviewed by detectives at the time. A search warrant for his DNA was obtained, and he was arrested nearly one year later on July 16.
“We should be able to trust our medical professionals when you’re in your most vulnerable positions," said TPD Captarin Richard Meulenberg. "So that’s where it’s this balance of does it happen? Well yes, but we don't see it like this very often at all.”
As for why it took ten months since the call came in and the victim got a SANE exam to make an arrest, Meulenberg pointed to their sexual assault exam backlog.
Oklahoma Senate Bill 967 and Senate Bill 975 were both passed in 2019 and require all collected sexual assault kits to be tested within 20 days. However, according to TPD, the passage of this law created a backlog because there is a lack of support to process the kits. This resulted in the delay of Beaver's arrest.
“With new personnel that we’ve hired, and a new system of efficiency, we are hoping to get these cases processed much faster going into the future and we are seeing that.”
Beaver has been charged with first-degree rape by instrumentation.
Though, this isn't the only case Meulenberg said TPD is working on that lists Beaver as a suspect.
“Both these cases, one involved Hill Crest South, one involved St. Francis, but that may not be all," he said. "We have to make sure that people understand that we don’t know exactly where he went, we don’t know if he was a traveling nurse, we don’t know you know, because once you get into nursing you can kind of go about anywhere, and there’s not really a robust system to kind of track that.”
Investigators say Beaver worked at several facilities, and they didn't share a list of locations to "ensure no service or location was inadvertently excluded."
Because of that second case, Meulenberg said the department is treating this as not an isolated incident and are looking for more victims.
"The issue you have there is if this is this person’s MO, how many people were affected who were legitimately unconscious, so its gonna be very hard to work those cases especially because if you were a victim of one of these crimes, the DNA evidence is probably gone.”
As of the evening hours of July 27, Beaver's RN license was still active according to the Oklahoma Board of Nursing.
If you believe you were a victim or you know someone who might have been, send an email to specialvictimsunit@cityoftulsa.org.
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