Sacramento-area nurse guilty of raping incapacitated surgical patients in 2011, 2019
Sacramento jurors this week convicted a surgical nurse who raped two of his patients as they recovered from surgery.
Gregory Harms faces a maximum term of 29 years to life in state prison for the sexual assaults in April 2011 and January 2019 at his April 29 sentencing before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Ernest Sawtelle, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. Sacramento Superior Court jurors handed down their verdict on Tuesday.
Harms was working at a Carmichael surgery center in April 2011 when he sexually assaulted a woman in his care who was incapacitated and recovering from her surgery, county prosecutors said. The woman immediately reported the assault.
In January 2019 at a Folsom hospital, Harms found another victim, this time, a woman unable to move her arms and legs and unable to speak. The woman could only signal with her hand and had limited writing capability, prosecutors told jurors. Harms, the woman’s nurse, bound her hand to her bed and sexually assaulted her.
The woman was found tied to her bed by a respiratory therapist who walked into the room and she reported her attack, said District Attorney’s officials.
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