I am posting against my better judgement but you cannot always believe the elderly especially if you are not there.
A worker used to come to the house, nice girl, a kid and in school to be a nurse. Well, she was accused of theft, could not afford a lawyer so she got a public defender. The PD told her to plea and she was sentenced to 18 months. Now, from what has been pieced together by my lawyer and my son's Facebook, she lives in a shelter/women out of prison place, works at a soup kitchen and still does not have custody of her child. It all makes me sick to my stomach.
I recently found out it was all lies. Well, I knew it was not true but did not have proof of the truth.
I encourage people not to just jump on the theft bandwagon but encouage people to get facts before destroying people's lives.
First of all I hope you have taken what evidence there is to a DA that was responsible for this woman's plea. I think that the public is not aware how often this happens. A DA and a public defender will get together and decide that a person should take a plea on an accusation. They tell the accused that they have a right to a jury trial, but that they may lose and if they do then they will face 5-10 year minimum for theft and elder abuse. So they do this and their lives are ruined.
Please please do what you can to follow up on this.
I am glad you posted this because almost daily we get Forum posts that say "My elder believes such was stolen from them". We DO know that the elderly can be preyed upon. They are sitting ducks, but we ALSO know that they can get paranoid and it is almost always about money, jewelry. And I saw my own brother who remained SO WITH IT, accuse someone. Everything in me told me that he himself misplaced this money he was TOLD not to keep in his room. I read him the riot act about not accusing someone because she wasn't a great favorite of his, without any evidence, so he didn't give a name of who he suspected. And happily so, his 1,000 was found put in the stack of his white towels below the book he thought he had put it into.
During the last years of her life my partner's Mom thought that her housekeeper stole everything. She took up a habit of elaborate hiding places which she promptly forgot about. It was always "Wilma Took It". God knows what is still pilfered away in that desert home in Arizona.
I know that it is true they can be stolen from and I know it is true they get paranoid. Until it is absolutely documented with proof I think accusations need to be carefully carefully combed out.