Tennessee Nurses Call for a New Law to Protect them from Registered Offenders

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When 48-year-old Michael Maynor assaulted a woman in broad daylight at a restaurant parking lot, somewhere in Tennessee, the woman’s only crime was being a hungry female. Michael Maynor, who choked and assaulted the woman, stopped doing the worst to her because she was lucky enough to struggle and get away from him.

Michael Maynor was a convicted offender, later charged with kidnapping, assault, and battery. Seven years later, scared nurses in Nashville, Tennessee, are pushing for a law to protect them from registered offenders like Michael Maynor, who present a real risk to nurses while caring for them.

The nurses are asking for more protections against offenders because, in many instances, nurses can find themselves in compromising situations where they are left alone with registered offenders.

One such nurse who voiced her concern about her safety and that of her colleagues is nurse Ciearria, who, when asked about why nurses were asking for more protection, said,

“We face anything from any gross s*xual comments, people have been threatened, and unfortunately, they have been trapped in a room where the patient has been a wall between the door and the nurse themselves, so it’s scary.”

While Nurse Ciearria’s concerns are warranted, nurses have also seen their fair share of attacks from registered offenders. For instance, in 2020, a nurse working at Vanderbilt University Medical Center was assaulted by her patient while caring for him. The attacker, identified as 48-year-old Earl Buckley, was a registered offender. Buckley’s arrest warrant stated he attacked the nurse while she was changing his diaper and bedding.

According to data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Tennessee has one of the country’s highest rates of offenders. The State ranks sixth nationwide, with 434 offenders per 100,000 people. Asking for more protection for nurses like herself, nurse Ciearria and her colleagues hope the bill will bring about a change that will ensure the safety of nurses at the state level.

Carissa Kohne, a co-writer of the bill, hopes that legislators will enact the bill to ensure that offenders present their offender identification cards when visiting hospitals for treatment. Speaking on the bill, she said,

“You would go register at the front desk, like any other patient, the only difference is that you would hand them your s*xual offender identification card, and let them know.”

Although protecting nurses deserves much more than bills that require offenders to present their identifications, it nevertheless underscores important steps such as legislators taking nurses’ and medical staff safety seriously. If passed into law, the new bill will give nurses added layers of protection, such as being aware of their patient status and thus taking the necessary steps to protect themselves.

Nurse Ciearria echoing Carissa Kohne’s sentiment further explained,

“It would allow us to plan how we would do patient care, not that it would change the care itself any, but we would be able to maybe go in with another nurse, let the charge nurse know hey I’m going in this room, and let them know when we are leaving.”