A Murrieta man was arrested today for alleged sexual battery against two female patients at a Murrieta hospital where he worked as a nurse, a district attorney’s spokesman announced.
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Paul Robert Simon, 53, was taken into custody about 7 a.m. at his apartment on Jackson Avenue in Murrieta on a $200,000 warrant.
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He is charged with five felonies — three counts of sexual battery on a medically incapacitated person and two counts of lewd acts by a caretaker on a dependent adult — and faces up to six years in prison if convicted, according to John Hall of the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
The defendant is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday afternoon at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta.
The acts allegedly occurred when he worked at Rancho Springs Medical Center in Murrieta, Hall said.
He said an investigation was initiated by a special agent with the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse in late 2010, after someone reported possible inappropriate or criminal activity by a nurse at Rancho Springs.
One of the alleged victims was a 58-year-old woman who was admitted to Rancho Springs in April 2009 and was briefly on life support. When she woke up, she had difficulty moving her body but was mentally alert, according to investigators, who allege that Simon, her assigned nurse, went to her bedside and used her hand to masturbate him.
Another time, Simon allegedly touched the woman inappropriately while he was bathing her.
In August 2010, another woman in the hospital was unconscious when Simon was seen by another nurse allegedly inappropriately touching the 57-year-old woman’s upper thigh area under her hospital gown, Hall said.
The hospital later ended Simon’s employment, he said.
The state Department of Justice sent the case to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, which filed the charges last week, Hall said.
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in 2006 my daughter had an emergency appendectomy at Rancho Springs. The nurse on the floor made me very very aware that I should stay the night in my daughters room, as you shouldn’t chance her being alone. (I was going to stay there anyways). Very sad that we have to protect our loved ones from sickos like this guy.