Aged care worker who hit patient with shoe wins appeal against jail sentence

A man who was jailed for assaulting a dementia patient with a shoe at a Sydney nursing home is set to walk free after appealing his sentence.

A Sydney aged care worker, who has won his sentence appeal for hitting an elderly man with a shoe, had no training on how to care for dementia patients.

Prakash Paudyal had been single-handedly caring for 16 patients and while his actions “cannot be excused”, both he and the victim were “victims of the system”, his lawyer told the District Court on Thursday.

The 36-year-old was jailed in January for eight months, with a non-parole period of four months. Paudyal had pleaded guilty to assaulting an 82-year-old man between August 26 and September 8 in 2018, while he was working at the Bupa Seaforth facility in the city’s northern beaches.

The Sydney aged care worker won his sentence appeal for hitting an elderly man with a shoe, with his lawyer saying he had no training on how to care for dementia patients and both parties were ‘victims of the system’. Picture: John Grainger

Judge Helen Symes allowed his appeal and instead imposed an eight-month intensive correction order which includes community service. Describing the circumstances of the two men as “equally tragic”, she said while not blaming the facility, she wondered why it only required one person to care for the victim.

“This was definitely a two person job at least,” she said, after she watched footage caught on a hidden camera in the victim’s room.

The video was upsetting and showed a breach of trust of a very old, vulnerable, ill man, the judge said.

Paudyal’s barrister Malcolm Ramage QC said his client was “never given any training in how to handle dementia patients, in particular those who have aspects of violence or irrational reactions.” Paudyal, who has Crohn’s disease, expressed his remorse in a letter to the victim’s daughter Ayda Celine, although she would not read it, the barrister said.

Ms Celine had installed the secret camera after becoming concerned about bruises on her father’s body.

Mr Ramage said Paudyal had been working two jobs at the time.