A former Arizona nurse accused of abusing a woman in a vegetative state who had been in his care and who later gave birth to his child pleaded guilty on Thursday to sexual assault, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
The woman had been in the same condition, unable to communicate or move, since entering the nursing home in 1992, when she was 3 years old, according to medical records. The family’s lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment.
During the investigation, the Phoenix Police Department collected the DNA of male staff members at the facility, and zeroed in on Mr. Sutherland because he was among the medical staff members at Hacienda HealthCare who were assigned to care for the woman around the time in 2018 that the police believed she had been assaulted. A DNA sample from Mr. Sutherland matched that of the child, a boy who was born in December 2018.
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