Caregiver Accused Of Sexually Assaulting Elderly Woman Takes Plea Deal
REDWOOD CITY (CBS SF) -- An in-home care provider accused of sexually assaulting an elderly woman in Redwood City has taken a plea bargain that will not require him to register as a sex offender, San Mateo County prosecutors said Tuesday.
Jaime Verzosa, 54, allegedly had an 82-year-old woman under his care orally copulate him on multiple occasions in 2016.
She told her daughter, who reported the assaults, and police launched an investigation. Evidence establishing the commission of a crime was established during a phone call to Verzosa and a follow-up interview, prosecutors said.
Verzosa pleaded no contest to felony elder abuse likely to cause great bodily injury Monday and was sentenced to six months in county jail with 36 days credit for time already served.
He will also be on supervised probation for three years, during which the charges are expected to be reduced to a misdemeanor. He's to have no contact with the victim, he cannot be employed as a caretaker or housekeeper at a board and care facility, and he can't be in the presence of an elder or dependent adult, prosecutors said.
The charges that would've required Verzosa to register as a sex offender were dropped because of a lack of physical evidence, according to District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.
"If we had something that had shown physical evidence of what he had done, seminal fluids or something like that, we could've made him plea to the whole thing—but it was pretty much based on statements he made," Wagstaffe said.
"He admitted to much of the conduct," Wagstaffe said. "But you have to have some evidence other than the statement."
There were also issues related to the mental state of the victim, who suffers from dementia.
"She wasn't going to be able to provide us anything," Wagstaffe said.
Verzosa's defense attorney Alex Bernstein was not immediately available for comment on the case.
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