Judge hears Alberta nurse who drugged co-workers has mental illness
12, 2006 - 5:28 pm
By: SHANNON MONTGOMERY
GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alta. (CP) - When staff at the northern Alberta hospital where nurse Renee Maher worked started getting mysteriously sick, she was frightened to stay home alone.
She often called her mother as she paced back and forth, unable to sleep, Maher said Tuesday in a victim impact statement during a sentencing hearing for Sarah Christine Bowes. Her mother suggested she go stay with a friend, so they'd both feel safer.
"I was actually sleeping beside the very person who was doing this to me," Maher said, her voice growing hard as she looked over at Bowes.
By all accounts, Bowes was a friendly, well-liked nurse who was close friends with many of the young women who stood in court Tuesday, often in tears, describing what their lives have been like since mysterious thefts and druggings began at the hospital in 2004.
Several said they could never forgive Bowes for stealing their identities to obtain credit cards, pointing suspicion at them to avoid it herself and, most of all, slipping tranquillizers into their food and drink when they were at work.
"I would stay awake at night hoping that nobody would be overdosed, nobody would be given a dose of medication they were allergic to and die, nobody would kill themselves or somebody else on their way home from work," said Marie Johnson, a supervisor on Bowes's unit at the time.
The sedative - identified as Lorazepam by tests of nurses' blood and urine, and tests of food and drink samples - includes a warning not to drive a motor vehicle.
In an agreed upon statement of facts also presented Tuesday, provincial court Judge L.E. Nemirsky heard how recreational therapist Trudy Raadik began to feel dizzy and light-headed after drinking a cup of coffee she got from Bowes.
She "recalled having trouble driving home after her shift and recalled driving in the opposite lane."
The question that came from so many of those affected was simple: Why had someone they considered so close chosen to hurt them?
"We are safe now that you are gone," said Johnson, the nursing supervisor. "All we have left to do is ask why."
According to defence lawyer D'Arcy DePoe, the answer, at least in part, is that "the person conducting these offenses is not the real Sarah Bowes."
He said that family members had seen a change in Bowes for some time before the crimes began. The responsible, intelligent and caring girl described by many character references began acting erratically, couldn't always remember discussions and was at times "divorced from reality."
He said the symptoms grew markedly worse when she moved to the northwestern Alberta city of Grande Prairie to work at Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in 2004.
"This can be traced to an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness," that only came out once she was arrested, DePoe said.
Bowes, 28, was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, he said, citing a medical report. The condition included a lack of impulse control and other factors that DePoe said contributed to the offences, some of which Bowes doesn't remember.
She is currently on prescription medication and is seeing a psychologist, he said.
"Her illness is now being dealt with, and she's done everything she could."
Both DePoe and Crown prosecutor Morris Golden agreed to ask that Bowes be sentenced to two years less a day, but they differed on how that should be served.
Golden said he would like to see the licensed practical nurse actually go to jail, based on the severity of her crimes.
DePoe instead asked that she be sentenced to house arrest.
Golden said a big factor in his decision to seek a jail term is that the medication can cause drowsiness and lack of mental clarity - a serious problem in an environment where nurses are looking after patients.
"They are at work when this is occurring. Mental alertness is a factor," he said. "This is a hospital. These are people who are treating people.
"We have virtually the entire staff working under a cloud of suspicion . . . people who are working in a constant state of fear.
Golden said he didn't believe Bowes poses a risk to the public, as she has been under the supervision of her father in Little Current, Ont., since being released on bail in April.
Bowes was to be sentenced Wednesday afternoon.
