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A former Arizona nurse accused of abusing a woman in a vegetative state who had been in her care and who subsequently gave birth to her child pleaded guilty to sexual assault on Thursday, according to the Attorney General’s Office. Maricopa County.
Nurse Nathan Sutherland, who worked at a Phoenix nursing home, also pleaded guilty to one count of abusing a vulnerable adult, also a felony.
Mr Sutherland, 39, faces up to 10 years in prison for sexual assault, the Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement; the charge of abuse carries life probation. Mr Sutherland is being held at Lower Buckeye Prison in Phoenix until his next court appearance, scheduled for November 4.
Mr Sutherland had previously pleaded not guilty on a one-minute indictment in February 2019. An attorney for Mr Sutherland could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday.
The criminal case began in December 2018, when a woman at a Hacienda HealthCare facility in Phoenix who cannot speak or walk gave birth to a boy, much to the surprise of staff at the facility, specializing in in long-term care. people with intellectual disabilities.
In the weeks that followed, the investigation became the primary focus of the Phoenix Police Department, its chief at the time said, and led to questions about the operations and conduct of the company. The former CEO of the company resigned shortly after the arrest, and the facility became the subject of not only police investigations, but also investigations by the Arizona Department of Health Services and of state investigations into Medicaid fraud.
The state attorney general’s office eventually discovered that former Hacienda officers misallocated funds, inflated expense reports and improper billing, resulting in an overpayment of nearly $ 11 million in Arizona health care cost containment system at the facility.
The case also led to a lawsuit filed by the victim’s parents claiming that despite state promises that only women would care for their daughter, Mr Sutherland had looked after her at hundreds of occasions from 2012 to 2018, reported The Arizona Republic.
The woman had been in the same condition, unable to communicate or move, since entering the retirement home in 1992, when she was 3 years old, according to medical records. The family’s lawyer could not be reached immediately for comment.
During the investigation, the Phoenix Police Department collected DNA from male staff at the facility and focused on Mr Sutherland because he was one of the medical staff at Hacienda HealthCare. who were assigned to care for the woman at the time in 2018. that police believed she had been assaulted. A DNA sample from Mr Sutherland matched that of the child, a boy born in December 2018. Mr Sutherland was arrested the following month and sent to jail in Maricopa County on suspicion of a police chief. sexual assault and a vulnerable person count. adult abuse.
A licensed practical nurse, Mr Sutherland had worked at Hacienda since at least 2012 and was assigned to a treatment unit for people with intellectual disabilities in 2014, the company said in a statement in 2019. He was fired immediately after the company learned of his arrest. said this statement.
Since its founding in the late 1970s, Hacienda HealthCare has grown into one of Arizona’s largest private providers of care for people with severe cognitive and physical disabilities, operating primarily on a single campus about 10 km south of the downtown Phoenix.
“After more than two and a half years, all of us at Hacienda HealthCare are relieved that Nathan Sutherland has finally pleaded guilty to his horrific offenses,” the company said Thursday.
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