A male nursing aide who raped an 83-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison during an emotional hearing in Hennepin County District Court.
Seven days before Christmas last year, George Sumo Kpingbah, 77, was seen moving in a "back and forth, thrusting motion" while standing at the edge of the elderly woman's bed at Walker Methodist Health Center in south Minneapolis, according to a state investigation. Kpingbah pleaded guilty in September to third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
In powerful courtroom testimony on Thursday, the woman's daughter spoke of her mother and her family's trauma and urged the judge to show no mercy.
"Now and for the rest of my life, when I think of my mother at Christmastime, or when my mother passes and I reflect on the final years of her life, I will have tattooed on my brain the knee-buckling shock of getting that call … letting me know that my mother had been raped," Maya Fischer said.
Hennepin County District Judge Elizabeth Cutter sentenced Kpingbah to a year more than prosecutors sought. She referred to the rape as "extremely devastating" to the family and said it warranted the maximum possible sentence in part because Kpingbah had "violated a position of trust" at the nursing home.
"This [rape] affects everyone who has to place a loved one in a facility," Cutter said.
On hearing the judge's sentence, relatives of the rape survivor grabbed one another in bear hugs and began crying. "All we ever wanted was for justice to be served," Fischer said.
Kpingbah clutched a small Bible during the hearing and apologized to the court. "I would just say to the family … and to everyone affected by my actions that I am sorry, I am sorry," he said. He vowed to take his Bible to prison. Members of his church occupied nearly half the courtroom.
