Last July, a Colorado hospital employee verified that the lights in the ICU room were off and that the curtain around the bed was drawn. She drew the curtain and found a disturbing image.
The patient was unconscious, with her gown pulled up to expose her breasts and genitals, the employee later told authorities. a nurse, Christopher Lambrosrested his head on the woman’s stomach and held a mobile phone as if he were taking a selfie.
A police investigation launched that same day discovered Deleted photos and videos showing the 61-year-old nurse sexually assaulting the unconscious patient and at least two other people, according to an arrest report from the Grand Junction Police Department. In one video, according to police, Lambros whispered to himself: “Don’t ever get rid of these videos.”
“You have to keep them forever… this is your Dexter collection,” he allegedly said, referring to the TV series about a bloodstain expert. that he has a double life as a serial killer.
The extent of the abuses committed in the St. Louis Medical Center Mary of Grand Junction, Colorado, a city of about 65,000 near the Utah border. Five months after the employee’s meeting with Lambros on July 9 in the ICU room, the authorities affirm that the investigation is still ongoing. Mesa County District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein said during a hearing in November that investigators believe they have uncovered a fourth victim whose assault took place in 2016.
Pointing in part to Dexter’s comments, he told a judge that authorities are concerned that they could find a “large number of victims.”
Lambros’ attorney, Scott Burrill, could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
Patients who were allegedly abused by the former nurse said their lives have been torn apart. They described their shock at having been raped at their most vulnerable: in a hospital, sometimes on ventilators.
“He has destroyed my life, he has destroyed me,” one of the victims declared in court. “I thought I was safe in the hospital and a nurse does this to me.”
Mary’s and parent companies SCL Health and Intermountain Healthcare. Proposed as a class action lawsuit, it argues that the companies knew or should have known of the wrongdoing of their employee, who started working for the hospital in 2012.
“Mary’s put the monster in the room,” lawyer for the victims, Siddhartha Rathod, told The Washington Post. “And St. Mary’s didn’t check on the monster when he was in the room. Yes, the responsibility lies with Lambros for his conduct. But the responsibility also belongs to St. Mary’s”.
Mary’s and her patients and reported it to law enforcement after the colleague who saw him reported what she had seen to her supervisor. He was fired after his arrest in October.
St. Mary’s Medical Center President Bryan Johnson said the hospital is cooperating with the police investigation.
“What this former nurse is accused of is reprehensible and goes against everything we believe and value at St. Mary’s Medical Center,” he said in a statement. “Patients place their trust in us and should feel secure in our care. We are working closely with law enforcement to protect our patients from those who mean to cause harm.”
Lambros is being held at the Mesa County Detention Center on three counts of sexual assault against a victim who is helpless or unable to consent; each charge carries a penalty of four to 12 years in prison, with a potential of up to 32 years in extraordinary circumstances. Rubinstein said during the November hearing that the charges Lambros faces could land him more years than he has left to live.
His bail was set at $1 million at the hearing.
One of the women he is accused of assaulting spoke in the courtroom, according to a transcript, sobbing that Lambros “shouldn’t ever leave anywhere!” She said that she was on life support when she was abused.
Another alleged victim, a 45-year-old rancher who is part of the lawsuit, told the Post that she was intubated when she arrived at St. Mary’s from another health facility last June. Her airways were inflamed and she spent several days unconscious in the ICU, where she Lambros worked as a nurse.
When she came to, she said, she told her mother that she felt something was “not right.”
“I kept telling him: ‘Something is wrong,'” recalled the woman, whom The Post he identifies by his initials, JV “I didn’t know what, but I knew it wasn’t going well. And I hate the fact that this is the answer.”
She said she had been sexually assaulted as a child, and when police told her last fall they believed she had been a victim at the hospital, “all that trauma from the past came back to the fore.” She struggled with the feeling that “someone can use your body however they want and you have no say in it.”
Since finding out about the alleged assault, JV said she has started therapy and medication for anxiety and depression. She continues to pay the bills for her hospital stay: $905 a month. He gets a paper statement and a text message every time money is withdrawn from his account.
“I can’t believe they keep charging me,” he says. “It’s a reminder every month.”
(c) 2022, The Washington Post – Por Brittany Shammas
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