WASHINGTON - Geraldine Pearson, a former Certified Nursing Assistant at a District of Columbia nursing home, has pled guilty and been sentenced on two counts of Criminal Neglect of a Vulnerable Adult following her failure to provide care for residents of that facility in 2007 and 2008, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor and District of Columbia Inspector General Charles J. Willoughby announced today.

Pearson, 28, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced on November 5, 2008, in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia following earlier guilty pleas in August 2008 before the Honorable Robert Rigsby. Judge Rigsby sentenced Pearson to consecutive sentences of 180 days in prison, with all but 10 days suspended, two $1,000.00 fines, suspended, and a total of four years of supervised probation. Pearson was also ordered to stay away from the nursing home and a victim in one case, not to work with vulnerable persons, and to pay a total of $100.00 to the Victims of Violent Crime Compensation Fund.

In the first case, the defendant was assigned to care for a paralyzed patient, a resident of the Washington Nursing Facility, a nursing home in Washington, D.C. On October 16, 2007, the defendant placed a heating pad beneath the victim at her request. The defendant then left the victim unattended for approximately five hours despite repeated requests from the victim for assistance. When the defendant returned to the victim's room, she discovered that the victim had sustained second degree burns to her lower back from the heating pad, resulting in permanent scarring.

In the second case, the defendant was assigned to bathe a 91-year-old resident at the Washington Nursing Facility on April 17, 2008. Rather than using a fully functional specialized bath tub to bathe the resident, the defendant used a tub with a hydraulic chair used to lift patients safely into the tub. This hydraulic chair had a broken seat belt, and the facility had labeled it with a warning sign not to use it. Despite knowing the chair was broken, and in contravention to her training, the defendant used the chair. As a result of the defendant being unable to secure the resident in the hydraulic chair, the resident fell out of the chair while being lifted off the floor. The resident sustained an injury to her forehead and a black eye.

In announcing the outcome of this prosecution, U.S. Attorney Taylor and Inspector General Willoughby praised the work of Investigators Jonathan Rich and Yolanda Brooks of the Office of the Inspector General Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) for their investigation. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Willoughby also commended the work of Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Tonolli and Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dangkhoa Nguyen and Jacqueline Schesnol, both of the MFCU, for their prosecution of these matters.