Guilty – Nurse Who Stuffed A Can In Elderly Man’s Mouth

A nurse has been found guilty of tormenting dementia sufferers at a care home. Jeffrey Ednalan, 34, carried out a number of abuses on helpless residents at Colinton Care Home in Edinburgh during the five months he spent working there.

The Filipino’s cruel assaults on the elderly residents included stuffing a deodorant can in the mouth of a 95-year-old man to stop him shouting, leaving seven people in incontinence pads all day to “save time” and grabbing a 76-year-old woman by the shoulders and shaking her.

He was also accused of two counts of indecent assault, one against an 86-year-old woman.

Ednalan, a married man, denied all the charges at Edinburgh Sheriff Court and insisted his fellow workers had made up the allegations out of jealousy at his senior position.

In his evidence, he denied allegations that he had terrorised staff and residents while working as a nurse at the home in Spylaw Road.

He said: “I am not a terror person; I would never do that. I was never superior to them.”

But a jury rejected his version and found him guilty of five of the eight charges against him. On one allegation of indecent assault he was found not guilty, while two other charges of assault were not proven.

Ednalan, a father of one who has been in the UK since 1995, now faces possible deportation after being sentenced next month.

He was dismissed from his job at the care home last May after the police investigation into his conduct.

All of the victims suffered from dementia at the time of the attacks and none was fit enough to give evidence during Ednalan’s trial.

Two of the victims have died since Ednalan, of Edinburgh, was charged by police in April last year.

Ernesto An, 37, a care assistant at the home, told the jury that Ednalan had been “an outgoing and jolly” friend while he was working as an adaptational nurse at Colinton.

But his colleague’s attitude changed when he was made up to a full nurse and he began to think he was “untouchable”. Mr An, also a Filipino, said: “He played with the residents – it became an amusement for him.”

In the most shocking of the assaults, Mr An told how Ednalan struck a 95-year-old man suffering from an anxiety problem on the back of a head with a towel.

When the frantic man continued to shout, Ednalan stuffed a deodorant can in his mouth, and then replaced it with five cleaning wipes.

Mr An recounted: “I was surprised to see that. When Jeffrey did that, the man looked at him with big eyes and his face dropped, like he was scared. He was still able to moan.”

He also told the court that senior nurse Ednalan insisted that seven of the residents were to remain in their soiled incontinence pads on one occasion.

Instead of changing them in the afternoon as usual, Ednalan made the residents wait until later that evening “just to save time”.

The worker felt unable to report Ednalan because he was close to a number of the senior staff.

When he tried to report his actions to one senior nurse, he was told “just give him a chance; he might change”.

The incidents only came to light when a new manager took over at the care home and his disgusted co-workers plucked up the courage to report Ednalan.

Fiscal Gillian More accused Ednalan of “robbing them [residents] of their dignity” with his sick stunts and insisted he had been “terrorising” them.

She said: “These people were wholly dependent on the staff at the care home. They deserve to be able to see out the rest of their lives in peace and not to be tormented.

“He chose to treat them like objects. If that is what he did with witnesses, what did he do on his own?”

Ednalan, who has a nine-year-old daughter, broke down in tears when the verdict was returned by the jury yesterday.

He will be sentenced next month by Sheriff Mhairi Stephen and could be placed on the sex offenders register. She told him: “These are matters of some gravity.”

Ednalan was also served with a deportation order by the court.