Carers won’t face sentence review for abuse of pensioner
PAIR WALKED FREE AFTER BEING CAUGHT ON HIDDEN CAMERA AT OLD PEOPLE’S HOME
TWO carers who abused a blind pensioner at a nursing home will NOT have their sentences reviewed despite a public outcry that they were spared jail.
Pedro Dias and Piotre Ciecielowski were roundly condemned having being handed suspended sentences after abusing a 95-year-old woman with dementia.
The incident was captured on secret CCTV cameras installed by Lynne Nuttall after she became concerned about her mother Marjorie’s unexplained injuries.
Dias threatened to ‘break every bone’ in the woman’s body, ‘kill’ her and drag her by the neck to her bed.
Ciecielowski watched on during the incident at Prestbury House Care Home March.
At Chester Crown Court, Ciecielowski, of Brown Street, Macclesfield, and Dias, of Rodney Street, Macclesfield, admitted illtreatment while working as a care worker. They were sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work.
Dias and Ciecielowski apologised for their behaviour.
Ms Nuttall called on the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) to review the sentences. Almost 2,000 people signed an online petition calling for in Macclesfield in action. But the AGO says it can only review – and ask the Court of Appeal to consider – certain sentences.
It cannot, a spokesman said, review sentences for those convicted of ill-treatment while working as a care worker.
Ms Nuttall said the sentence was ‘too lenient’ and wants Dias and Ciecielowski behind bars.
She said: “My family and I am sure people will be outraged by this decision. What does this say about a society where the physical, verbal abuse of 95-year-old who is blind, wheelchair-bound, suffers from dementia, frail, confused and totally dependent, is considered a ‘lesser’ crime? They must pay for what they did - and that means prison. I just want justice.”
A spokesman for the AGO said the power to ask the Court of Appeal to review sentences only applied to a limited number of offences, and Dias and Ciecielowski’s offence was not one of them.
Cases which can be reviewed include murder, rape, robbery, some child sex crimes and child cruelty, some fraud, some drug crimes, some terror-related offences and crimes committed because of a victim’s race or religion.