‘I wish every day it didn’t happen’

ACCUSED Kathleen King, staff member at Aras Attracta, Swinford, leaving Ballina court last summer. Pic: Keith Heneghan

Áras Attracta care assistant who pushed and threatened resident denies assault

Edwin McGreal
Castlebar

A care assistant charged with the assault of an elderly woman with ‘very profound physical difficulties’ has said she wishes ‘every day’ that ‘it didn’t happen’.
Kathleen King (57) of Knockshanvally, Straide, Foxford, was on trial on the charge of assault at Castlebar District Court today. Ms King, a healthcare assistant, told the court that what she did was ‘poor judgement and bad practice’ but denied that it constituted assault.
Ms King was the fifth staff member of Áras Attracta on trial this week. The prosecutions have been taken following an RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme on standards of care in such facilities. The footage was obtained by a RTÉ undercover reporter working in Áras Attracta.
The footage for the case against Ms King shows a resident in Bungalow Three of Áras Attracta on November 15, 2014, sitting in her chair and sliding out of it. The resident is referred to as Miss C, by order of the court.
Ms King then went over and pushed the resident in the chest and back into her chair. She then told the resident, “Don’t you dare get up from your chair or you’ll go out to the hallway.”
She is also seen slapping Miss C with an A4 sheet, the meal plan for the residents.
The court was told Miss C has the intellectual capacity of ‘a two- or three-year-old child’ as well as ‘very profound physical difficulties’, which include ‘severe’ osteoporosis, oedema and arthritis.
Ms King told the court her instructions were to ensure Miss C was ‘kept on the chair’ and that  she could break her hip if she fell. She said Miss C would slide from her chair ‘a couple of times a day’.
“All I wanted to do was keep this poor woman in the chair. If she broke her hip I’d be in trouble, and my job would be on the line,” said Ms King.
She described her actions as ‘spontaneous’.
“It was poor judgement and bad practice, and I wish every day that it didn’t happen,” she told the court. She added it was not assault, as there was ‘no malice behind it’.

Lack of training
The court heard Ms King commenced work as a domestic assistant in Áras Attracta in 1992. She was promoted to a care assistant in 2001 without any specific training.
In closing, defending counsel Eoin Garavan said ‘justifiable’ use of force was a defence for assault, and that while care and compassion is needed in the relationship between a carer and resident, it is not always that straightforward.
He cited a nursing textbook, which stated that ‘where a defendant commits a lesser evil in order to prevent a greater evil’, it was permissible. He argued that Miss C falling on the floor and breaking her hip would have been worse than Ms King’s pushing.
He said Ms King could have done it in a ‘nicer, more gentler way’, but it was ultimately done ‘for the good of Miss C’.
Prosecuting counsel Pat Reynolds argued Ms King was not putting Miss C back in her chair, as Miss C was back in the chair when Ms King pushed her, and he said her actions constituted an assault.
Judge Mary Devins adjourned the case to Friday next. There, she will give a date for a decision in three of the five trials and will give an update on a defence application with respect to another trial. She has adjourned another trial to February to have it heard by another judge, after what she says was information given in court that ‘compromised’ that case before her.
A sixth worker, who pleaded guilty to three charges of assault, will have her sentencing date decided next Friday as well.