Nurse’s aide acquitted on all counts of sexual assault
A former nurse’s aide hugged his attorney and broken into tears Thursday after a Delaware County jury found him not guilty of all charges alleging he sexually assaulted an elderly dementia patient in March at the Inn at Bear Trail.
The jury took less than three hours to find Patrick Osadebe, a 51-year-old Nigerian national and father of three, not guilty of rape and gross sexual imposition related to a March 5 incident at the assisted-living facility in Orange Township.
“He was very fearful that he wouldn’t get a fair trial because he was a refugee,” said his attorney. James Owen. The verdict, he said, “supports the notion that the Bill of Rights is alive in America. I’m very relieved and very happy.”
Jailed for more than seven months before the four-day trial, Osadebe “wants to get home and see his wife and kids,” said Owen.
Owen described the early morning incident at the 90-bed facility on Monroe Drive off South Old State Road as a misunderstanding by a fellow aide who walked in on Osadebe as he was changing and cleaning the woman in a restroom.
Osadebe has said he was tired and sat on the toilet while tending to the woman who was next to him.
The aide had testified that the woman was on Osadebe’s lap and that both had their pants down when she walked in.
She said she was “haunted” that she didn’t do more to intervene. Instead she left to get a supervisor.
Managers at the Inn at Bear Trail waited some four hours before calling Delaware County Sheriff’s deputies.
While the woman’s DNA was found on Osadebe and his underwear, Owen pointed out that his client was repeatedly scolded by supervisors for not wearing gloves or washing his hands and that “contact transfer” had likely occurred.
There was no DNA from Osadebe found on the woman during an examination.
In closing arguments, Hawken Flanagan, an assistant Delaware County prosecutor, said that the eyewitness aide had no reason to make up such an allegation in what was “truly a traumatic experience for her.”
“That she left rather than stay to protect (the woman) still haunts her,” Flanagan said.
Owen countered: “She obviously didn’t know what she saw. She opened the door, saw something she didn’t expect and drew inferences that weren’t there.”
Osadebe fled his native Nigeria two years ago to reunite with his wife of 17 years and their three school-age children, Owen said.
They had sought refugee status earlier.
Osadebe worked multiple jobs and had applied to Franklin University in pursuit of a masters degree in cybersecurity.
Owen said that Osadebe did nothing to avoid detection as a guilty person might, describing a “consciousness of innocence.”
“This should be a message to the community that innocent people can get mistakenly, and even wrongfully, charged,” he said. dnarciso@dispatch.com @Deannarciso