Steven Hicks, 60, was arrested after the pensioner alerted her children and told them a man in full medical garb had attended her home and sexually assaulted her (Picture: Hyde News & Pictures Ltd)
A nurse who sexually assaulted a vulnerable 85-year-old woman under the guise of ‘checking her mobility’ during a fake house call has been jailed.
Steven Hicks, 60, was one of the staff who regularly visited the pensioner, who lived alone and was recovering at home after breaking her arm in a fall days before Christmas in 2021.
Despite telling the Royal Berkshire Hospital she no longer needed evening call-outs, depraved Hicks turned up at her door the following night, January 5, 2022, in full medical gear.
The elderly victim later told police how Hicks invited her to remove her trousers and lay down in bed under the pretence of undergoing a massage before pressing his face between her legs.
Hicks, from Woodley, Reading, was jailed for four-and-a-half years at Reading Crown Court on Thursday after a jury found him guilty of one count of sexual assault on January 19 this year.
Judge Kirsty Real told him: ‘You went to the home of an elderly woman in the evening and you had no legitimate reason to go there. It was a deception.
‘You knew from previous visits that she was a vulnerable person, due not only to her age but to the fractures that she had suffered and from which she was recovering at the time.
‘There was a significant degree of planning: you were in full medical equipment and you knew that other carers would not be there. There is no way that she would have willingly invited you in unless she thought you had a professional reason to be there.
‘There is a very high degree of abuse of trust involved. You affected your victim’s sense of independence and safety in her own home – and you have undermined her trust in other carers.’
The pensioner, who is now 87 years old and cannot be named for legal reasons, received home visits from hospital staff having suffered fractures from a fall on December 21, 2021.
However, she reportedly cancelled all evening hospital home checks the day before Hicks arrived, unscheduled and claiming to be from the orthopaedic unit, and sexually assaulted her.
When the nurse pressed his face against her, the court heard she asked him: ‘What on earth are you doing?’
She then pushed him away and asked for his identity card, which he did not provide, before he left.
The woman called relatives to inform them and they reported the incident to police.
Officers reportedly arrived within 15 to 20 minutes of the incident.
In body-worn camera footage of the woman talking to police in her home, she told officers the assailant apologised after she pushed him away and told her he ‘got carried away’.
During her video-recorded evidence, the woman said there had been no discussion about ‘anything intimate’ happening.
In September, eight months after the incident, forensics confirmed Hicks’s DNA matched samples found on the woman and on the waistband of the leggings she was wearing the day of the assault and he was arrested shortly after.
Specialist investigator on the case Philippa Sharman said phone data placed him in the vicinity of the pensioner’s home at the time of the offence.
Moreover, the CPS said the woman’s account of the assault was detailed and footage from her video doorbell confirmed someone was at her house that evening.
It said Hicks also accessed the woman’s medical records multiple times while she was receiving home visits, often when he was on annual leave and without reason to check them, and including on the day he assaulted her.
CPS lawyer Shilpa Shah said: ‘This was a shocking crime carried out by someone in a trusted profession.
‘Steven Hicks knew the victim was vulnerable and that no other carers were due to visit her that evening, and he used his position to gain access to her home to assault her, in her own bedroom.
‘Hicks denied the charges against him, but we were able to present evidence to the court clearly linking him to the assault.
‘His DNA matched that found on the victim and her clothing, and his phone data placed him near her home at the time of the offence. He will now spend time in prison for his crime.’
Speaking from Reading Police Station, Ms Sharman said detectives were ‘keeping an open mind’ as to whether there are more victims of Hicks.
She said: ‘If any more information comes to light, then that will be for us to look into.
‘This is a serving member of the NHS, they’re a very trusted profession, they have a certain amount of power when they get into people’s homes, into care homes, and people deserve to be safe in their home.’