Group Home Worker Let Developmentally Disabled Woman Disappear For 5 Days: AG

LINCOLN, RI — A worker at a Lincoln group home went to get her nails done while she was supposed to be caring for a developmentally disabled woman who was later found curled in a fetal position and covered in her own urine and feces, the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office said.

Roberta Gerard, 43, was charged Friday with the neglect of an adult with severe impairments, failing to provide treatment, care, goods, and services necessary to maintain the health and safety of an adult with developmental disabilities, obstructing an officer in the execution of duty, and knowingly making a false statement of a crime, according to a news release from the attorney general's office.

Gerard was employed as a Direct Support Professional at Seven Hills Group Home in Lincoln in March when she picked up her client, a 45-year-old intellectually and developmentally disabled woman, for a “day out” in the community, as required by the victim’s care plan, according to the release.

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The Cranston police previously described her as a nonverbal woman with autism.

After picking the woman up shortly before 1 p.m., Gerard "stopped at a nail salon on Park Avenue in Cranston and left the (woman) alone and unattended in her black Lexus SUV for about an hour and a half, according to the defendant’s cell phone records," the release said.

Gerard eventually returned to her vehicle and discovered the woman was nowhere to be found, according to the release.

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About four hours later, Gerard went to the Cranston Police Department to report the woman missing and provided "several false accounts of the events leading up to the (her) disappearance," the release said.

Gerard, told officers Dalomba went missing inside a Burlington Coat Factory store, according to police, but after officers reviewed store security footage and questioned Gerard, she admitted she fabricated the story.

Gerard then claimed the woman vanished from the back of her car on North Clarendon Street while Gerard was inside heating food, estimating the woman was unsupervised for about four minutes, police said.

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The Cranston police searched for the missing woman for five days before a man reported "finding a woman matching the victim’s description inside a Honda Pilot parked on Pond Street in Cranston, about a block and a half from the nail salon," the release said, and officers "located the victim inside the vehicle, lying in the fetal position and covered in her own urine and feces."

Gerard was scheduled to appear in court Oct. 22.

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