A former Madison State Hospital registered nurse will serve 50 days in jail after pleading guilty to four charges of battery in the battering and strangling of patients with physical or mental disabilities on multiple occasions during 2014 and 2015.



Sharon Back, 67, was sentenced this week in Jefferson County Circuit Court and is to begin serving her sentence Monday, May 20. Senior Judge Steve Fleece, Sr., sat the bench for this case because Circuit Court Judge DJ Mote was the county’s chief deputy prosecutor when the attorney general’s office requested the county file the charges. Mote explained this week that he assisted the attorney general’s office with preparing documentation and consulted them as a local voice of authority until he declared his candidacy for the judge’s seat. This is one of several criminal cases now pending that he is not able to hear due to conflict.



The Indiana Attorney General’s office represented the state.



The charges, filed in October 2016, came more than a year after the allegations were reported to a daytime supervising nurse at the facility. Several evening shift employees who worked in the unit for the more “medically fragile patients” who needed almost total assistance for activities and often suffer from some type of memory loss reported seeing several instances of Back physically and verbally abusing residents in the unit during her work hours.



Some of the instances resulted in physical harm to the residents, the probable cause affidavit said. Other instances involved the use of racial slurs and other derogatory comments made to residents.



Evening shift employees told the daytime supervisor in August 2015 that they had reported the incidents to the shift supervisor and another licensed practical nurse, court records said, but neither allegedly made an effort to stop Back’s actions.



The information gathered by the daytime supervisor was forwarded to the facility’s director of nursing, who began an internal investigation and then forwarded the information to state officials.



Facility officials terminated Back and two other employees Sept. 9, 2015, the affidavit said.



State officials began investigating the reports in November 2015 and learned the woman allegedly used a space that was designed to be a short-term safe place as a means of punishing certain residents for no reason and falsified patient records to justify her actions.



The state’s memo regarding Back’s sentencing lists aggravating circumstances for each count of battery — one for each patient that suffered physical or mental harm because of Back’s actions.



The state said one victim was “targeted...for abuse due to his race.” The abuse of this victim included being referred to with racial slurs, verbal threats and physical harm.



Some of the physical harm, which could have resulted in death, according to the state’s memo, including choking and gagging.



The state reported that each incident of abuse was part of an “intentional, ongoing pattern of abusive behavior.”



The victims, all males in their mid-60s at the time of the abuse, could not defend themselves or report the abuse because of their mental and other health conditions.