8:23am Saturday 4th September 2010
By Neil Hunter
A JUDGE launched a scathing attack on a nurse convicted of assaulting a mentally-ill care home resident as he locked him up for six months yesterday.
Edward Ruddick was branded “sadistic” and “remorseless” by Judge Peter Armstrong, who said: “I’d be failing in my duty if I was not to impose an immediate prison sentence.”
The judge also praised Ruddick’s whistle-blower colleague, Christine Taylor, for having the courage to report the abuse, even though she risked not being believed.
Care assistant Mrs Taylor has been too ill to work since the investigation was launched at the home in May last year.
She told a jury during a Teesside Crown Court trial last month that Ruddick, 48, was well-liked and respected by management and she feared they would take his side.
Ruddick, from Spennymoor, County Durham, had spent 30 years in the care industry and was a staff nurse at Victoria House, Stockton, when the claims were made.
He denied two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm, but was convicted of one – stamping on the foot of an 82-year-old resident – after a week-long trial.
The court heard that Ruddick pressed down hard on Reg Hulse’s foot as punishment for the dementia sufferer having tipped over a bedside cabinet in November 2008.
Judge Armstrong labelled the assault “sadistic”
and told Ruddick: “The last thing any patient needs, even if they are difficult because of their condition, is to be assaulted.”
David Comb, mitigating, told the court that Ruddick has lost his job, “his vocation”, as well as his good name and his family as a result of the proceedings.
“Your Honour may reasonably conclude that (the assault) did represent something that was completely out of character with his professional life, a one-off,” he said.
The court heard that Ruddick, now of Pikesyde, Dipton, Stanley, County Durham, maintains he did nothing wrong to Mr Hulse, who has died since the incident.
Judge Armstrong told him: “Any family with that situation (a relative in a home) would feel nothing but disgust, as does this court, with any carer who breaches that position of trust.”
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