Male nurse jailed for raping 27 elderly patients in Finland

HELSINKI, Finland — A 24-year-old Finnish male nurse was sentenced Wednesday to nine years in prison for raping 27 elderly patients aged between 74 and 100, Finnish news agency STT reported.

“According to the court… the victims were elderly patients in a nursing home aged between 74 and 100 years old whom the man was nursing,” STT said.

The rapes took in 2013 and 2014 in an undisclosed hospital in the patients’ bed or the lavatory, according to the district court of the Pirkanmaa region in southwestern Finland.

The 27 rapes and two coercions to a sexual act led the court to consider a 12-year term.

But the sentence was shortened since the man fully collaborated to the investigation over crimes “which had no external witnesses and which the victims were unable to reveal due to their condition.”

The elderly victims suffered from dementia and some of them were physically disabled.

The nurse himself said a parole and community service would have been sufficient punishment but the court said he had acted “systematically” and ordered him to pay 18,000 euros ($20,000) in damages to his victims in addition to the prison sentence.

To protect the victims, the court did not reveal where in Finland the crimes took place.