Exclusive: Convicted of Beating Elderly Person to Death, Yet Eligible to Re-employ at Care Facilities

[Anchor]

As we previously reported, an 80-year-old dementia patient was beaten to death by a care worker at a nursing home. It has been confirmed that this care worker can be re-employed at care facilities even if their guilty verdict is finalized in court. This is due to a major loophole in the current law.

Reporter Kim Minjun brings us this exclusive report.

[Reporter]

In November of last year, a male care worker in his 60s, surnamed A, kicked an 80-year-old dementia patient in the knee, knocking him down, twisted his arm, and slapped him in the face.

The following day, the elderly person passed away. In May, the first-instance court found A guilty of "fatal injury" and sentenced him to four years in prison, rejecting his denial of charges in which he claimed he "only made threatening gestures."

[Grandson of the Victim (June): Even if he apologized and begged for forgiveness, it would still make us angry. But for him to act like that (deny the charges), honestly, made us feel unbearable anger.]

A appealed the decision, but the second-instance court reached the same conclusion last month.

However, neither the first nor second-instance courts issued an employment restriction order, which is customarily sentenced together in trials for abuse crimes.

This is because fatal injury is not stipulated as a crime subject to an employment restriction order under the Welfare of the Elderly Act.

While the Welfare of the Elderly Act defines injury, abandonment, intimidation, and assault as elderly abuse-related crimes, more serious crimes such as murder, fatal injury, and fatal assault are omitted.

This contrasts with child abuse-related laws, which not only include murder and fatal assault but also separately stipulate "child abuse resulting in death" to punish it more severely than general fatal injury.

Because of this loophole, even if A's guilty verdict is finalized, only his qualification as a care worker will be revoked for a certain period, and he will face no restrictions on re-employing at care facilities.

When hiring employees, care facilities must check the criminal records of elderly abuse crimes that restrict employment. However, fatal injury is not specified as a related crime in police criminal record inquiry data.

[Nam In-soon, National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee Member (Democratic Party): (Under current law) there is a huge loophole where murder and fatal injury do not fall under (elderly abuse-related crimes). As a result, it is even difficult to figure out how many related criminals are currently working in care facilities.]

During the process of codifying elderly abuse crimes into law at a National Assembly standing committee meeting in 2019, these crimes were not included, and it is known that no further discussions have taken place since then.

(Video by Cho Chang-hyun | Video Editing by Kim Ho-jin | Graphics by Jeon Yu-geun)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.