By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
The U.S. Navy veteran is suing after spending almost two years in jail before assault charges were dropped.Â
A now-81-year-old gay man with Parkinson's disease has spent 22 months in jail after staff members at a retirement facility found him engaging in sex acts with fellow male residents, according to the man's lawsuit.
A lawyer for Leroy Martin, J. Conor Corcoran, says the sex was consensual, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. He said his client was incarcerated at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic for being gay.
Authorities released Martin in September after prosecutors dropped the charges against him.
"They were hell-bent on falsely painting Mr. Martin as a sexual predator, and with a pink brush, to boot," Corcoran told the paper.
Martin performed sex acts on at least two men in 2019 while at the Southampton Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Shippensburg, Pa. Corcoran said it was consensual.
Staff at the facility found Martin, a wheelchair user, performing oral sex on a 43-year-old resident. They reported the incident to a supervisor. The supervisor then reported it to the police because the resident had suffered a brain injury.
Corcoran claims that police only were called because the sex was between two men.
The younger resident told police he had allowed Martin to perform oral sex on him. "Only because I hadn't been with a woman in 21 years," the man told police, according to the paper.
The other man, who was also an older adult, has since died. Before his death, he told police that he had woken up to find Martin performing oral sex on him.
"I like women. I don't like men," the man told authorities during an interview. The Inquirer reports that the man told the police he wanted Martin to stop but didn't want him to be arrested.
The lawsuit claims the man only spoke to police after staffers at the facility compelled him to do so. It also states that the man told the staff that he didn't want Martin to perform the sex act because he was ashamed.
Corcoran said both men were able to give consent. Neither man lodged a complaint at the facility before Martin was arrested, according to the lawsuit.
"The nursing home lied to the state police that the men with whom Mr. Martin had sex were incapable of consent," Corcoran claimed.
Pennslyvania police charged Martin with involuntary deviant sexual intercourse and indecent assault. He was held on $20,000 bail.
Martin, a U.S. Navy veteran, was detained for the four months it took to be arraigned, the lawsuit states. There were at least 13 pretrial conferences due to COVID-19.
"There's some real angels in the Cumberland County Jail who looked after him," Corcoran told the paper, noting the high amount of COVID-19 cases in the jail system.
Eventually, the district attorney's office dropped the charges after Martin had spent 22 months awaiting a trial. Martin's lawsuit claims prosecutors had started thinking about dropping the case a whole year earlier but decided not to since Southampton and nearby nursing centers wouldn't allow him back due to the charges.
Martin is now a resident at a center in Allegheny County.
The Inquirer cites a study by the University of Michigan that showed 40 percent of those ages 65 to 80 are sexually active. Corcoran said his client is part of that 40 percent.
Martin's lawsuit alleges false arrest, emotional distress, and negligence, among other counts. No anti-discrimination law based on sexual orientation exists in the state to sue the nursing home, according to Corcoran, but the alleged discrimination is "baked into" the suit.
"The Plaintiff's homosexuality was outrageously, egregiously ... and unlawfully treated as a crime by the Defendants herein," the lawsuit states.
Martin is suing of an unspecified number of damages, according to the paper.
"This was consensual with both men," Corcoran said. "If it had been an Adam and Eve story instead of Adam and Steve, they wouldn't even have called the police."
