A carer who punched an 81-year-old dementia patient in Wollongong, New South Wales, has been described by a judge as "poisonous and nasty".
Alicia Gawronski was on Thursday found guilty of the common assault and intimidation of Gladys Buchanan in her Thirroul home in August last year.
During the hearing police released shocking, expletive-laden videos they had filmed outside the elderly woman's home.
"You're a carry-on candy and full of s---," Gawronski can be heard saying in the video.
"No-one's going to believe someone who's full of s---, and who's got dementia, remember that."
In the videos Ms Buchanan can be heard whimpering and moaning, along with the sound of slapping.
Ms Buchanan's neighbour, Stephen Leebold had called police concerned about the noise coming from inside the house.
"There was no way you would talk to a human being like that unless you were trying to denigrate them," Mr Leebold said.
"And that is exactly what she was doing."
Carer says noise caught on video was 'me slapping myself'
In court on Thursday, Gawronski said the slapping noise was the sound her hitting herself in an attempt to gain the elderly woman's attention.
"Me slapping myself to get her attention, when she goes into these episodes she is not there anymore, it is quite heartbreaking," she said.
"But I am trying to get her to come back."
Police said they also saw the offender hit the woman on the thigh as she sat on the floor, without her pants on, while having her nappy changed.
Gawronski repeatedly denied ever assaulting Ms Buchanan, but she said she did have to touch her thighs when changing her, which she did "with a closed fist," she said, "because I have acrylic nails and they are razor sharp."
She also defended some of the threats in the video, including:
"If you keep behaving like this, you'll be going to a nursing home, and I'm going to make sure it's the worst one available."
Gawronski said the comments were meant to be triggers.
"It wasn't in a sense to upset or scare her, but she didn't want to go and it got to a point where I couldn't care for her then she would have to go," she said.
But magistrate Roger Clisdell rejected Gawronski's explanations.
"Let me just say as I enter my senior years if I end up I a situation like that I would be entirely unhappy," he said.
"The suggestion is that she will be put in a nursing home where she will be mistreated.
"That must mean that there is a fear for her safety and welfare.
"It can't mean anything else."
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