A retiree has been found not guilty of removing the trousers of a wheelchair-bound woman with dementia and pushing her incontinence pad to the side while visiting his father in a Sydney nursing home. David Patrick Frost, 68, had denied the aggravated indecent assault of the cognitively impaired victim in November 2017. The woman was never able to give a statement due to her health and cognitive deficiencies. She has since died. After six days of hearing in Downing Centre Local Court, magistrate Daniel Covington on Monday dismissed the charge, saying he could not be satisfied the offence was proven beyond reasonable doubt. The question had been what occurred within a bedroom of the facility, Mr Covington said. CCTV taken from the corridor shows Mr Frost wheeling the woman into the room then leaving 14 minutes later. “I note there is a body of circumstantial evidence that supports the prosecution case,” the magistrate said. “I cannot, however, ignore the evidence that has been raised in the prosecution case that causes the court some concern.” The elderly woman had “sometimes” sat on the edge of her bed unassisted, Mr Covington said, and her stretch pants were “easy to pull off”. She’d also been seen by multiple witnesses trying to remove her clothes and incontinence pad in the past. “There are a number of pieces of evidence that seem to support that she, from time-to-time, can function in a way that seems higher than her capacity described by others,” the magistrate said. There was another reasonable conclusion that could arise from the facts when considered as a whole, he said. Additionally, the woman’s daughter testified her mother “was aggravated, saying things about sluts and pimps” sitting on her bed in the hours before she interacted with Mr Frost and the assault allegation then arose. The prosecution had argued the frail, elderly and disabled woman was found by a nurse, frightened and shaking on a bed, with her genitals exposed and her pants two metres from her body. The DNA of Frost – a stranger – was found on the front waistband of her “folded down” incontinence pad, crown prosecutor Melanie O’Connell argued. But defence barrister William Barber said the DNA evidence could be explained by Mr Frost helping to lift the woman onto the bed from her wheelchair. In an hour-long recorded interview, Mr Frost told police he’d wheeled the woman into the room after she asked for a soda water and “pushed her in, up to the bed” before trying to find the drink. “(If) you’re trying to lift somebody from a position … one might place their hands down around the waist belt in an attempt to pull them up,” Mr Barber said.
