Ex-care home boss faces sentence for cruelty

A former care home boss who mistreated two elderly patients is due to be sentenced today.

Howard Griffiths, 53, "shoved and pushed" an 85-year-old man with senile dementia while he was night manager at a nursing home, a trial heard.

Griffiths, of Wordsworth Close, Ebbw Vale, was also found guilty of mistreating Dorothy Holland, 72, who suffered from vascular dementia, while he was working at Rozelle Nursing Home in Abergavenny, South Wales.

He had been qualified as a psychiatric nurse for more than 30 years, Newport Crown Court was told.

The jury heard Griffiths would frequently heave Derek Gregory out of his wheelchair while standing on his feet.

Giving evidence at the trial last month, Dawn Paull, a care assistant at the home, said: "He would stand on Derek Gregory's toes and pull him up by his shirt and push him down on to the bed.

"When I was doing it there were two members of staff. We would never move him on our own, or we used a hoist."

She added she "was shocked at the way he was being treated" and said when Griffiths was transferring Mr Gregory from a chair to his wheelchair he would "shove" him into the seat.

She said Mr Gregory was unable to talk to say if he was in pain.

Griffiths denied 10 counts of wilfully ill-treating or neglecting a person who lacked mental capacity. A jury cleared him of eight of the charges listing individual patients at the home but convicted him of two.

He is due to be sentenced at Newport Crown Court at 12pm.