Dresden. As an employee in a nursing home, a woman is said to have used brutal methods to keep dementia patients under control. Without further ado, you locked the patient in. That was neither permitted nor necessary, according to an indictment against the 53-year-old woman from Dresden, who is currently facing the Dresden District Court for deprivation of liberty.
According to the prosecutor, the three incidents occurred in May and June 2019. One day in May, the accused locked a patient in a lounge around 7:30 a.m. On two more days she is said to have locked patients in a room, once even several times.
The consequences were considerable even without the indictment, because the geriatric care assistant was dismissed for these misconduct. Today she works in a different facility. In 2020 she received a penalty warrant sentencing her to a fine. However, the woman did not accept this punishment, which is why she is now fighting for an acquittal before the Dresden District Court.
Put in the bed of roommates
The defense attorney stated that the first case was a man with severe dementia who only came to the ward in May. The patient interfered with morning care because he kept coming into the rooms of roommates. According to the lawyer, he even went to bed with them and worried them considerably.
Her client was desperate and locked the man in the so-called parlor, a lounge, for “ten minutes” on May 26th. The aim was to protect the other residents of the station. She didn’t know how to help herself, hardly got any help from colleagues and was overwhelmed. She felt sorry for the whole thing.
Neither the defense counsel nor the defendant gave any information on the other two allegations. The 53-year-old only said once that it was not possible to lock patients in their rooms because the doors could be unlocked from the inside. The judge replied that this was not possible for those affected due to their constitution.
Witnesses incriminate the accused
The defendant reported about the morning care between 6 and 8.15 a.m. and the new patient who was always walking back and forth. While the nursing assistants were busy with the morning toilet, the specialists took care of the medication. The time was tight, twelve patients until breakfast. She had previously worked in another department for two and a half years: “It always worked out great,” she said.
Former colleagues, however, presented the act differently, the patient could also have been locked up for significantly longer. They were also not asked for help by the defendant in the case of the man suffering from dementia.
The prosecutor did not agree to the judge’s suggestion that the matter should be discontinued in exchange for a monetary condition. The accused lacked insight into injustice. In the penalty order, a confession was also assumed to mitigate the penalty, but little of it was felt.
The trial will therefore continue, with additional witnesses.
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