Carer found guilty of assaulting 81-year-old dementia patient
A carer who punched her 81-year-old dementia patient in Wollongong has been described by a magistrate as “disturbing” and “nasty”.
On Thursday, Alicia Gawronski was found guilty of common assault and intimidation of Gladys Buchanan in August last year.
Gawronski, who had been working as the live-in carer for Buchanan in her Thirroul home in New South Wales’ south coast, could be heard yelling and swearing at the patient in two videos recorded by police outside the elderly woman’s home.
“You are full of s**t,” Gawronski said. “No-one is going to believe someone who is full of s**t and has got dementia, remember that.”
Gawronski also made some threats, including: “If you keep behaving like this, you’ll be going to a nursing home, and I’m going to make sure it’s the worst one available.”
Sounds of slapping and screaming could also be heard in the video.
Buchanan’s neighbour Stephen Leebold called the police after hearing the noise coming from the house.
“There was no way you would talk to a human being like that unless you were trying to denigrate them,” Leebold said.
Senior Constable Brack Lipinski, one of the police officers who responded to the triple zero call, said he saw Buchanan sitting on the floor without her pants on before Gawronski punched her in the leg.
Gawronski said at the court that the slapping noise came from her hitting herself in an attempt to gain Buchanan’s attention.
“Me slapping myself to get her attention, when she goes into these episodes she is not there anymore, it is quite heartbreaking,” she said. “But I am trying to get her to come back.”
She also defended her threats, saying they were akin to “Aussie larrikin pub talk” and not meant to “scare” Buchanan.
“It wasn’t in a sense to upset or scare her, but she didn’t want to go and it got to a point where I couldn’t care for her then she would have to go,” she said.
Magistrate Roger Clisdell said Gawronski was “delusional” for assuming that her physical and verbal abuse against the elderly woman was normal behaviour.
“One could go so far as to say the tone is poisonous, nasty, threatening, mean-spirited,” Magistrate Clisdell said.
“To say what happened that night was ‘disturbing’ was to put it mildly. She was abused and threatened.”
The magistrate said Gawronski had “reached the end of her tether and she was incapable of looking after Ms Buchanan” after rejecting a geriatrician’s advice to put the patient in high supported care.
Gawronski will receive her sentence in December.