A male resident at the Kildegaarden nursing home in Denmark recently made an indecent sexual proposal to a member of the staff. In a U.S. nursing home, this behavior would have been ignored or rebuked. But at Kildegaarden, the response of the facility's director, Inger Marie Kristensen, was to tell a nurse to telephone for a prostitute.
"There was a considerable change in his demeanor after the escort girl had paid him a visit,'' Kristensen said in an interview with Bloomberg.com. "We do this for our clients just as we offer them other services that they need as human beings.''
Kildegaarden, about 100 miles west of Copenhagen, has about 100 residents, including victims of Alzheimer's disease and strokes. In the past three years, nurses have arranged visits by call girls three times.
Prostitution has been legal in Demark since 1999. While Copenhagen forbids contact with call girls in nursing homes, municipalities are free to allow the practice and many apparently do. The leader of the Danish Sex-worker Association, who identifies herself only as "Susanne," says prostitutes "often'' visit Danish elderly homes.
"To forbid vulnerable customers from obtaining the services of a legal business is discriminating, both against the sex workers and the people who need help to get the services,'' Susanne said.
Still, the government is stepping up efforts to get women out of the sex trade. Although in a recent poll 54 percent of Danes said prostitution should remain legal, some lawmakers are working to ban it.
But Kristensen, the Kildegaarden nursing home's director, sees a place for the occasional service her facility provides. "Basically this is a matter of respecting the elderly and their needs,'' she said.
For a link to the Bloomberg article, click here.
