Aged care worker jailed for sickening shoe attack on elderly patient
An aged care worker has been jailed for a sickening shoe attack on an elderly patient which was caught on camera.
The violent attack on a vulnerable nursing home resident would have gone unpunished had the 82-year-old’s family not set up a hidden camera.
The video led to an eight month jail sentence for the aged care worker seen beating his elderly victim with a shoe.
Prakash Paudyal, 36, pleaded guilty to bashing a patient with a shoe at an aged care home last year in Seaforth, about 12 kilometres north east of Sydney.
“The assaults themselves weren’t gratuitous in nature,” his lawyer Louis Katsinas said.
“They weren’t planned or premeditated, rather in the heat of the moment.”
Victim David Nabulsi, 82, was diagnosed with dementia in 2015 and placed in the facility in 2017.
His daughter secretly set up a camera in a photo frame, concerned after he became increasingly withdrawn.
“I wouldn’t even think twice about it, I would do it again,” the victim’s daughter Ayda Celine said.
It was an “inexcusable, flagrant breach of trust,” the prosecution said.
The prosecutor insisted the security vision be played in court, which was objected to by Paudyal’s lawyer.
It was “disturbing” and “certainly distressing,” Magistrate Chris Longley said.
“It is a significant departure from what would be expected in his position of care and trust.”
He sentenced Paudyal to eight months jail.
“So overwhelmed,” Ms Celine said.
“We finally got justice and, you know, we’re finally standing up for the elderly.”