Revealed: ‘Pure evil’ nurse who sedated patients for fun had A&E medic boyfriend who was caught trying to cover up her thefts by chewing up medicine packs and flushing tablets …
- Catherine Hudson, 54, was found to have illegally sedated two stroke patients
- Her boyfriend Marek Grabianowski, 46, tried and failed to cover-up her crimes
Published: 18:20, 15 December 2023 | Updated: 18:20, 15 December 2023
A high-flying NHS[2] nurse chewed up cardboard medicine packs and flushed the tablets down the toilet in a failed cover-up bid after his callous girlfriend was accused of stealing drugs and mistreating patients.
Marek Grabianowski, 46, the lead nurse in the accident and emergency department at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, took the desperate measure after a whistleblower reported Catherine Hudson, 54, for drugging a paralysed stroke victim.
Senior nurse Hudson and another healthcare worker Charlotte Wilmot, 48, were yesterday found guilty over the ill-treatment of stroke patients at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, after drugging patients ‘for their own amusement’.
Hudson illegally sedated two patients to ‘exercise contemptuous power,’ and conspired with junior colleague Wilmot to sedate a third.
The ‘pure evil’ pair, who have been jailed for a total of ten years and two months, are said to have targeted patients if they disliked them or their relatives, drugging them for ‘an easy life’.
Catherine Hudson’s (pictured) boyfriend chewed up cardboard medicine packs and flushed the tablets down the toilet to hide the crimes of his 54-year-old partner
Catherine Hudson (left), 54, and Charlotte Wilmot (right), 48, pictured leaving Preston Crown Court earlier this year
Police photo of evidence including drugs collected from the two healthcare workers
Among the medication his partner and fellow senior nurse stole from work were sedatives that 46-year-old Grabianowski was intending to use on his elderly father, a court heard.
Unbeknown to either of them, however, police had already secretly bugged the home they shared, and recorded the sound of packages being popped and evidence being flushed away.
The listening device also captured 54-year-old Hudson’s furious rant at the student nurse who blew the whistle, branding her ‘f****** stupid’.
The divorced mother-of-three – a former estate agent who said she was inspired to care for stroke patients after nursing her own father – moaned that the principled youngster had ignored a ‘little inside rule’ on the ward.
Hudson ranted ‘you stick together, whatever you do’, added ‘it’s just taken to the grave’. Both were this week jailed following a huge police investigation into a corrupt stroke ward.
A judge this week said patients were ‘exploited’ so nurses could enjoy ‘an easy shift, for amusement and to exercise contemptuous power over them’.
A trial in October heard there was ‘a culture of abuse’ on the unit, with staff able to help themselves to Zopiclone, a sedative, and other drugs for their own use or to give to patients.
Police uncovered a dossier of cruel messages littered with mocking emojis swapped by Hudson and colleagues spelling out what detectives slammed as their ‘sickening’ attitude to patients.
Pictured are Hudson (right) and Wilmot (left) exchanged messages joking about sedating their patients
In one, Hudson boasted she had sedated a patient ‘to within an inch of her life’.
In another, she wrote that she’d had ‘a lovely day’ at work as she had ‘sedated all the troublemakers’.
The police probe was sparked in 2018 by a student nurse who was horrified at seeing Hudson give sedatives to a partially paralysed stroke patient even though they hadn’t been prescribed.
Aileen Scott had travelled from her home Glasgow to Blackpool for a ‘well-earned break’ with her son Brian.
However the following day the retired financial director – now aged 76 – suffered a stroke and was left completely paralysed on the left side of her body.
On being challenged by the whistleblower, who was granted anonymity, Hudson callously replied there was to worry as she was marked ‘not for resuscitation’, Preston Crown Court heard.
The case would therefore not be ‘opened up’ if she died, she added.
Mrs Scott’s son told the court this week that the ‘bravery’ of the student nurse had ‘most likely saved my mum’s life’.
Police were called in and secretly bugged the home Hudson – a band 5 nurse – shared with Grabianowski, a band 7 nurse who worked in a different part of the hospital.
Aware that she was under suspicion – but oblivious to the fact they were under surveillance – Hudson was recorded saying to a family member that it was ‘almost like a hidden… little inside rule, you know, that we all have, that you stick together, whatever you do…. it’s just taken to the grave.
‘We say that all the time, ‘We take that to the grave, take that to the grave’, [and] this stupid f****** student nurse has spoilt that…’
Hudson threatened to kill a patient on hospital stroke unit and bragged about sedating another ‘within an inch of her life’, appalling WhatsApp messages read to the jury reveal
At the same time, Grabianowski was recorded tearing apart packets of tabets he had emptied out of the medicine cabinet at the home they shared.
He then chewed up the cardboard packaging – apparently to destroy the unique serial numbers which could have traced them back to the hospital – before being heard flushing the pills down the toilet.
Grabianowski later admitted conspiring with Hudson to steal Zopiclone – which he said was to give to his father – as well as reflux medication Omeprazole to treat himself for stomach cramps.
The respected animal shelter charity trustee also admitted perverting the course of justice by disposing of evidence.
His barrister told a court this week his client was ‘thoroughly ashamed’ of his actions.
Julie Taylor said he ‘panicked’ after police began investigating the theft of medication and had been unaware of the ill-treatment alelgations.
His high-pressure NHS job meant he had been too busy to go to the GP to ask for a prescription, she added.
Grabianowski – who once raised GBP750 to help rehome abandoned pets throught a sponsored Blackpool to Edinburgh bike ride – began working for a local council after losing his hospital job following his arrest, but resigned after being charged.
This week Hudson was jailed after a judge said she and a junior colleague ‘exploited’ patients ‘for an easy shift, for amusement and to exercise contemptuous power over them’.
Grabianowski, who wasn’t involved in the ill-treatment of stroke ward patients, was jailed for 14 months.
A disturbing exchange in April that year when Hudson joked that a patient in bed 29 had was doing ‘not a f***ing lot’ because she had sedated her two days in row
In another message to a colleague, Hudson bragged about sedating ‘troublemaker’ patients
The Honorary Recorder of Preston, Judge Robert Altham, told him: ‘Your duty as a citizen and a professional was to co-operate with the investigation, not to frustrate it.’
Hudson worked as an estate agent after leaving school, having three children – now in their 20s and 30s – before going to the University of Central Lancashire as a mature student and training as a nurse.
She qualified in 2010, opting to work on the stroke ward after nursing her own father through the condition, her trial heard.
In the witness box, Hudson insisted her cruel messages were ‘banter’ and ‘gallows humour’ sparked by chronic understaffing.
She was convicted of illicitly sedating two patients, among them Mrs Scott, who the court heard was targeted to keep her ‘quiet and compliant’.
In a betrayal branded ‘sickening’ by detectives, Hudson and a junior colleague, Charlotte Wilmot, 48, who egged her on, were also found guilty of conspiring to administer a sedative to a third patient.
This week they were jailed alongside Grabianowski, with Hudson sentenced to seven years and two months and Wilmot, an assistant practitioner, to three years in prison.
Hudson, of Blackpool, was also convicted of stealing medication.
She pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to conspiring with colleagues to steal other drugs and also perverting the course of justice.
Wilmot, also of Blackpool, had also pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal medication from the hospital.
Hudson was cleared of ill-treating two other patients while Wilmot was also convicted of encouraging Hudson to drug a patient.
Police were alerted by hospital chiefs in November 2018 after a student nurse on a work placement said Hudson suggested administering unprescribed zopiclone, a sleeping pill, to elderly patient Aileen Scott, who survived the incident
Speaking following the sentencing, Ms Scott’s son Brian, who was present for most of the trial, branded the messages ‘absolutely horrendous’
All face proceedings banning them from ever working in healthcare again.
Afterwards Mrs Scott’s son described Hudson and Wilmot as ‘pure evil’ and said their crimes would ‘haunt’ her family for the rest of their lives.
Det Ch Insp Jill Johnston, of Lancashire Police, who led the investigation, said the sentences reflected their ‘serious abuse of trust’.
‘The families of the victims expected their loved ones to be looked after and cared for in a place of safety. The reality was the opposite,’ she said.
The son of a stroke patient who was illegally sedated by the two women yesterday described them as ‘pure evil’ and said that his mother’s treatment would ‘haunt’ their family for the rest of their lives.
Brian Scott, whose 76-year-old mother Aileen Scott was sedated after being left paralysed by a stroke to keep her ‘quiet and compliant,’ today said the case was ‘disturbing’ and that his mother’s treatment would ‘haunt’ her family for the rest of their lives.
He said: ‘[They’re] absolutely disgusting and nothing prepares you for what I heard throughout that trial, especially around some of those messages and the way they were speaking about patients – in some cases colleagues as well.
‘Absolutely horrendous and what really, really I found really disturbing as well is they portrayed it as just ‘banter’.
It was a joke, with humour.
‘That’s not humour. And it wasn’t just a one-off. It was continuous.
There were months and months and months of these messages.
‘And it was the same way they spoke about patients, some who were really, really vulnerable.
‘They’re nurses, they’re there to help, look after and care for patients, not behave the way that they did.’
Outside court he said he was ‘absolutely delighted’ that the defendants had been given custodial sentences.
He added: As you heard during the trial, there was mention of “We’ll take this to the grave.”
‘Well they didn’t.
They were found out, and I cannot thank the student nurse who whistleblowed enough.’
References
- ^ James Tozer (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ NHS (www.dailymail.co.uk)