A homeless man believed he could force his departure from a care home if he did “something nasty” to a nurse, a court was told this week.

Magistrates’ Court heard that a nurse, who cannot be named for legal reasons, left the home because of the trauma of Terrence Parsons, 53, groping her.

Lisa Trott, for the Crown, read her victim impact statement on Tuesday – one day before Parsons was sentenced to a year in prison for sexual assault.

The woman wrote: “I started to dislike working in the environment and no longer wanted to be there.

“My security and trust had been broken and I’ve often wondered while taking care of male clients if it would happen again.

“Flashbacks would hit my mind every time I was in that specific hallway; it was just too much to deal with.”

She added: “One morning six co-workers came to me to talk about the incident in the span of one hour.

“They didn’t know how it triggered so much for me.

“I broke down crying and notified my boss of what happened and requested to leave the facility.”

The woman said in her victim impact statement that she had been at the care home for nine years before Parsons arrived.

She added that he made several inappropriate comments to her when he first arrived that culminated in the assault on February 11 last year.

She said: “I had to request special leave time off work to catch myself.

“I had to get a doctor’s note to grant my request. My sense of security was taken from me when Mr Parsons touched me in a very sexual way.”

Parsons, of no fixed address, was first charged with the offence on December 21 last year and admitted the offence on March 10.

Ms Trott told the court that Parsons revealed he did not like staying at the care home and thought that if he did “something nasty” then he would be removed.

She added that Parsons, who had been convicted of another sex assault in 2011, was at risk of reoffending and said that he should be given a jail sentence of between nine months and two years.

Elizabeth Christopher, for the defence, said that her client had mental health problems and could not be held fully responsible for his actions.

She said that Parsons had suffered brain damage and had trouble taking care of himself.

Ms Christopher added: “Just because there were no external factors doesn’t mean he was cognisant of what he was doing.”

She also said: “I’m not diminishing at all the facts of this offence, but Mr Parsons is not responsible for the actions of her colleagues.”

Magistrate Maxanne Anderson sentenced Parsons to one year in prison, with his time in custody, from December 21 last year, taken into consideration.

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