Hospice chaplain gets prison for sexual assault at facility in Sacramento County
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- A judge sentenced Arthur Earl Apgar to five years in prison for sexual assault.
- Apgar was a hospice chaplain and sexually assaulted a woman in her 70s.
- The woman living in hospice care at the elder care facility died four days later.
A judge on Thursday sentenced a man who worked as a hospice chaplain last year when he sexually assaulted a woman living in an elder care facility in Sacramento County.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet sentenced Arthur Earl Apgar, 73, of Placer County to serve five years in prison for sexually assaulting the woman, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday in a news release.
On Oct. 22, Apgar was convicted of four felony counts of sexual battery on an institutionalized victim, prosecutors said. Court records show Apgar entered a plea to the charges before his trial was scheduled to begin that day.
Sacramento County sheriff’s detectives arrested Apgar on Aug. 8, 2024, on the four felony counts of sexual battery. The victim, a woman in her 70s, lived at a care facility where Apgar worked as a hospice chaplain at the time of the sexual assault, Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a sheriff’s spokesperson, said at the time of the arrest.
Gandhi said Apgar worked for a company that was contracted by care facilities, and the elderly woman was sexually assaulted within a week before the arrest. The Sheriff’s Office spokesperson declined to release the name of the company Apgar worked for or the location of the care facility where the alleged sexual assault occurred. He said the care facility and the company have been cooperative with detectives, and the victim’s family has asked for as much privacy as possible.
The District Attorney’s Office did not include the name of the company or the care facility in the news release.
Prosecutors said the woman was unconscious, on hospice care and living at the facility when the August 2024 sexual assault occurred. The woman had fallen at the facility, so her son installed a video camera to watch her.
Apgar, working as a chaplain, had visited the woman to pray and sing with her. Prosecutors said Apgar was seen on video sexually assaulting the woman four days before she died.
After his August 2024 arrest, Apgar was booked at the Sacramento County Main Jail. He posted bail and was released from the jail a short time later.
Court and jail records show the judge ordered Apgar back into jail custody after his sentencing hearing Thursday. He remained in custody Monday awaiting a transfer to a prison.
