Elderly Abuse Conviction Leaves Loophole for Caregiver Reemployment

[Anchor]

We previously reported on an incident where a care worker beat an elderly dementia patient in their 80s to death at a nursing home. It has been confirmed that this care worker can be reemployed at care facilities even if the conviction becomes final upon appeal. This is due to a major loophole in current laws.

Reporter Kim Minjun has this exclusive report.

[Reporter]

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

The next day, the elderly victim passed away. In May, the first-instance court found A guilty of bodily injury resulting in death and sentenced him to four years in prison, despite A denying the charges and claiming he "only pretended to threaten" the victim.

[Grandson of the Victim (in 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), frankly, made us feel unbearable rage.]

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

However, neither the first nor second-instance trials included an employment restriction order, which is customarily handed down alongside convictions for abuse crimes.

This is because bodily injury resulting in death is not stipulated as a crime subject to employment restriction orders under the Welfare of the Older Persons Act.

While the Act defines injury, abandonment, intimidation, and assault as elder abuse-related crimes, more severe offenses such as murder, bodily injury resulting in death, and assault resulting in death are omitted.

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

Because of this loophole, even if A's conviction is finalized, he will only be stripped of his care worker license for a certain period and will face no restrictions on getting rehired at care facilities.

When hiring staff, care facilities are required to check for criminal records related to elder abuse that restrict employment. However, bodily injury resulting in death is not specified as a relevant crime in the police criminal record inquiry data.

[Nam In-soon, National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee Member (Democratic Party of Korea): (Under current law), murder and death resulting from violence are not included (as elder abuse-related crimes), which is a huge loophole. As a result, we are not even in a position to figure out how many such offenders are currently working in care facilities.]

During the codification of elder abuse crimes in a parliamentary standing committee in 2019, these offenses were omitted, and no further discussions have reportedly taken place since then.

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