Prayash Poudel: Neutral Bay aged care worker on trial for allegedly sexually assaulting resident

A former aged care home worker allegedly sexually assaulted a resident while bathing them, a court has heard. The defence has argued the alleged victim was delirious when she made the accusation.

An aged care resident allegedly told a doctor a worker had sexually assaulted her with “fingers stuck up the wrong place” while bathing her, a court has heard.

Prayash Poudel, 29, is on trial charged with sexual intercourse without consent and sexually touching the same elderly woman while working at a Neutral Bay nursing home in February 2020.

The Strathfield man pleaded not guilty to the charges in May last year.

On day two of the trial at Downing Centre District Court, Poudel’s defence team argued the alleged victim was delirious at the time she made the allegation due to worsening dementia.

Poudel’s lawyer Daniel Petrushnko referenced incidents reported by the aged care home which showed the woman had provided false recollections on several other occasions.

Prayash Poudel, 29, is charged with sexual intercourse without consent and sexually touching a nursing home resident. Picture: Clare Sibthorpe

These included reporting a fellow resident had kicked her when CCTV footage confirmed that did not happen, claiming another patient stole her expensive necklace which her family later said was not actually missing and falsely claiming someone had stood on her foot.

Mr Petrushnko asked Professor Tuly Rosenfeld, an experienced geriatrician who assessed the woman’s police interview after the alleged incident and interviewed her himself months later, what he made of these false statements.

Poudel is fighting both charges.

Dr Rosenfeld said delusions “come and go” with dementia patients, but that when he saw her after the alleged sexual assault, she “wasn’t suffering from hallucinations or delusions or any abnormality in alertness which would suggest acute delirium”.

But Mr Petrushnko asked if it was possible she could have been recalling what had happened “at a different location or time” when she reported the sexual assault, to which Dr Rosenfeld said: “yes”.

Crown Prosecutor Tina Jowett asked Dr Rosenfeld if there were any inconsistencies in either the woman’s police interview soon after the alleged “bathing incident” or in the following interview with him.

“She was consistent in the actual events she recounted; (there was) very clear consistency,” Dr Rosenfeld told the court.

“She used the same words and clear descriptions … of fingers being stuck up in the wrong place.”

Dr Rosenfeld said while the alleged victim was clearly suffering from dementia and brain damage aggravated by an earlier fall, he believed “the history and events she talked about were a true representation of what she’d experienced”.

He told the court that was based on 40 years of experience of seeing dementia patients.

The only sign of cognitive impairment Dr Rosenfeld noticed during the interview, the court heard, was that she would be occasionally repetitive or go off on a tangent.

Poudel, who was on bail, sat stone faced throughout the evidence.

The alleged victim’s daughter sat on the other side of the courtroom to a man and woman supporting Poudel.

The trial will continue on Thursday, when another experienced geriatrician, Dr John Obeid, is due to give evidence.