Nursing Assistant is Sent to Jail on Assult, Battery, and Failure to Appear Charges
Friday, October 20th, 2006.
Boston, MA - A former nursing assistant who is charged with abusing an elderly Alzheimer’s patient at a Swampscott nursing home in 1990 was sentenced to jail time after he pleaded guilty to abusing patients at a Lynn nursing home, Attorney General Tom Reilly announced today.
Richard Elton Rudy, 50, pleaded guilty to one count each of patient abuse, and assault and battery as well as two counts of failure to appear. The failure to appear charges were the result of Rudy’s long history of defaults on the patient abuse charges over the past 15 years. Lynn District Court Judge Matthew Nestor adopted the recommendation of Assistant Attorney General Toby Unger and sentenced Rudy to serve 18 months in the Middleton House of Corrections. Rudy will serve one year on the abuse charges and six months for the failure to appear counts. Rudy had been returned to Massachusetts three weeks earlier after the Attorney General’s Office learned he was living in Arizona, had him arrested on the default, and extradited him back to Massachusetts.
Rudy was charged following an investigation by AG Reilly’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) into abuse that occurred at the Jewish Rehabilitation Center for Aged of the North Shore, Inc., where Rudy was employed as a nursing assistant from August 1990 until December 1990.
The investigation uncovered that in November 1990, while providing care to an elderly Alzheimer’s patient, Rudy pushed the patient up against a bathroom wall, held him by the shoulders, violently kneed him in the groin, and said “Merry Christmas.” The entire incident was witnessed by another nursing assistant.
Jewish Rehabilitation staff members reported the abuse incident to nursing home administrators, who fired Rudy on December 3, 1990, and referred the matter to the Department of Public Health and the Attorney General’s Office. On January 10, 1991, DPH conducted an independent investigation of the abuse incident.
On the basis of the MFCU and DPH investigations of this matter, the Attorney General’s Office brought a criminal complaint against Rudy in September 1991, charging him with one count of patient abuse and one count of assault and battery. Over the next fifteen years, Rudy defaulted on four different court dates and fled the Commonwealth twice to avoid prosecution on this matter.
In 1991, Rudy failed to appear for his arraignment and left the Commonwealth. Rudy only reappeared in Lynn District Court in 2003, upon his arrest for an unrelated assault and battery. Rudy then defaulted on three additional scheduled court dates in this matter. The last default occurred on the scheduled trial date of January 26, 2006. On that date, the Attorney General’s Office obtained a non-bailable warrant for Rudy’s arrest, and charged Rudy with two counts of failure to appear or bail jumping. Upon continued investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, it was determined that Rudy had, again, fled the Commonwealth to avoid prosecution. On August 24, 2006, Rudy was arrested in Arizona as a fugitive of justice, and on September 18, 2006, the Attorney General’s Office brought Rudy back to Massachusetts to finally face charges.
Assistant Attorneys GeneralToby Unger and Sara DeSimone prosecuted the case, which was investigated by Investigators Joseph Shea and John Curley, also of AG Reilly’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
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