A BRADFORD nursing home carer has been cleared of ill-treating a dementia patient.

It took the jury less than two hours yesterday to acquit Ludmila Sitkowska of slapping and pinching 76-year-old Walter Pitts while washing and dressing him on April 25 last year.

Sitkowska, 54, known as Lucy, was kicked in the face by Mr Pitts that morning, she told Bradford Crown Court.

She said she treated residents at the Staveley Birk Leas Nursing Home, in Nab Wood, Shipley, like members of her own family, and she had no reason to hurt him.

"People still remember me as a good person and a friendly and professional carer," she said.

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It was alleged that she repeatedly slapped Mr Pitts and laughed while pinching a sore on his foot.

Sitkowska, of St Paul's Road, Shipley, was said to have told him: "If I kick you, you will die. Jackie died and you will be next to see the angels."

Simon Haring, for the Crown, said that Jackie was a resident at the home but she had died in hospital a short time earlier.

Sitkowska, who was charged with ill-treatment of a person who lacks capacity, said she had worked at the home as a health case assistant since 2007 and no one had complained about her before.

She believed the malicious allegation was made to remove her from her job.

The court heard she was immediately suspended when her colleague, Razna Ali, made the complaint.

Sitkowska, who is of good character, said she was recruited in her native Poland by the Czajka Care Group.

They were very friendly and professional and she was really happy in her work.

She was fully trained to NVQ level and treated the residents like members of her family.

Mr Pitts' dementia had worsened since she began caring for him. He was immobile, had to be lifted on a hoist and he would get agitated and aggressive, swearing and spitting, when his incontinence pad was changed.

"He has his own world in his mind and it is difficult to understand him," she told the jury.

When he kicked her in the face, she told him: "We mustn't kick each other. We are dying so fast and we need to have nice memories."

She said she held him to wash him but never slapped him or pinched his foot.

"I would never do such a thing," she told the court.