SAMANTHA LEE – GRANGEMOUTH

A woman who sexually assaulted five female colleagues at a care home was spared jail today ????

Samantha Lee, 31, was sentenced to a year’s social work supervision. Lee’s treatment of one 37 year-old woman fellow worker at the institution – in Larbert, Stirlingshire – was described as “traumatic”.

The victim – who’d just returned to work following a medical episode – said Lee had approached her at the nurse’s station and grabbed her head with both hands and pulled it into her chest.

The woman told Falkirk Sheriff Court: “She pulled my head into her cleavage and shook her breasts. I was shocked, really stunned by it.”

Lee also made comments about the woman’s partner’s private parts and slapped her on the bottom in the dining room in front of residents.

The woman said that she’d mentioned to Lee that she was, at that time, not eating meat.

She said: “She asked if I want to eat my partner’s meat. It was really grotesque. I haven’t forgotten the way she made me feel.”

Management launched an investigation and four other victims came forward. Lee resigned her post as a carer at the home – which cares for adults aged 18 to 65 – and the police were called in. One colleague said Lee had been “hitting her boobs”.

The 51-year-old said she felt “kind of violated”. She said she was on a waiting list for a mammogram for bumps at the time.

She said: “She hit the bottom of my breasts and pushed them up. It was sore. The second time she did it I told her if she didn’t stop I was going to bust her. She went from that to flipping my buttocks.”

Another care home colleague, a 57-year-old married woman, said she had worked with Lee for over a year and found herself on the receiving end of Lee’s behaviour “quite a few times”.

She said: “We’d be sitting having a laugh and she’d get up and touch my breasts.”

She said: “She did it to quite a few people. She’d catch you unawares. She’d get up, do it, and walk away. I didn’t find it funny.”

A 23-year-old nurse at the home said Lee had twisted her nipples “multiple times”.

After a two-day summary trial last month, Lee of Grangemouth, was found guilty of seven charges of sexual assault against five female staff members. Lee denied the offences and told the court she was “happy and bubbly” and had “never hurt anybody”.

When she appeared for sentence today Sheriff Neil Kinnear ordered that in addition to the year of social work supervision, she should be subject to the notification requirements of the sex offenders’ register for 12 months.