Federal prosecutors are investigating whether harmful experiments on hydration and sexual arousal were carried out on people at a state-run home for Iowans with disabilities.

The Justice Department investigation of the Glenwood Resource Center in western Iowa, which revived longstanding questions about the care of some of Iowa’s most vulnerable people, comes after years of alarming news about the facility.

In 2017, state regulators found a pattern of suspicious injuries and a failure to report allegations of possible abuse and mistreatment. This year, The Des Moines Register reported that 14 severely disabled residents of the center died between June 2018 and April 2019, more than twice the usual rate of deaths there. Three more residents of the center, which is home to about 200 people, have died in the last eight weeks, state officials said.

“It is not acceptable, it is not adequate and we are making changes,” Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, told local reporters this week.