Nursing home worker avoids prison for ‘reprehensible’ abuse of mentally disabled patients

Investigators say Jada Leslie amused herself by tormenting mentally disabled patients at Cumberland County’s nursing home, then filming their distress with her cell phone.

The 23-year-old Carlisle woman didn’t appear to be amused Tuesday morning when she came before county Judge Christylee Peck, however.

Leslie, a former certified nursing aide at the Claremont Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, was there to be sentenced on her guilty plea to a felony charge of mistreating a care-dependent person.

Peck hit Leslie with a 3-year probation sentence recommended by Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Sibert. Defense attorney Michael Palermo also said Leslie will be surrendering her state CNA license.

Leslie was arrested after Detective Jeff Franks of the Middlesex Township police investigated an elder abuse complaint at the county-owned home. Franks concluded that Leslie and a co-worker, Leanne Wettrich, were physically and emotionally abusing dependent patients, including those with dementia, filming the mistreatment and sharing the videos on Snapchat.

The incidents occurred between September and December of 2019, Franks wrote in arrest papers. The oldest of the six victims was 94, he noted.

The detective cited an incident where Leslie was accused of rubbing hand sanitizers into a patient’s open wounds. The victim “would yell, scream and beg (Leslie) to stop the abuse and (Leslie) would only laugh,” Franks wrote.

Wettrich admitted to committing the abuse, but Leslie denied it, the detective said. He said photo and video evidence of the mistreatment was recovered from Leslie’s cell phone.

Palermo said Leslie resigned from her nursing home job.

“It’s reprehensible,” Palermo said of his client’s actions. “When you trust your relative to a nursing home you don’t expect this to happen.

Still, he said Leslie was young when the crime occurred, but is now a mother and is more mature. She earns a living cleaning motel rooms, Palermo said.

“I’m truly sorry to the victims and their families that I caused pain to,” Leslie told the judge. “I was young. I’ve learned my lesson.”

The sister of one victim told Peck that her sibling, who is in her 30s, is in the nursing home after being mentally and physically disabled in a car crash. The sister said her nephew, who is 15, would know better than to do what Leslie did.

“She does not remember the incident,” the woman said of her disabled sister. “But we the family all live with it every day because of (Leslie’s) actions.”

Peck also fined Leslie $200 and ordered her to perform 50 hours of community service.

Wettrich, 33, of Carlisle, is awaiting trial on multiple charges in the case, court records show.

Cumberland County commissioners voted 2-1 in July to sell Claremont to a private firm for $22.3 million.

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