A Schuylkill County woman must spend 98-204 months in state prison for abusing her care-dependent mother last year.
Eileen Haines, 71, was defiant on Monday afternoon at her sentencing hearing before Schuylkill County Judge William Burke. Haines, Burke said, showed no remorse and took no responsibility for her actions against her mother that were caught on security video inside their Zion Grove home in December.
Haines entered a nolo contendere plea earlier this year, accepting whatever punishment may come from it.
In handing out Haines’ sentence (equal to 8 years, 2 months to 17 years), Burke said he wished he could have sent her away for life but ended up giving a sentence beyond what the prosecution had asked in the case.
Burke said he’s prosecuted and defended in cases of elder abuse numerous times throughout his career but Haines’ actions stood out among them all.
“This is probably one of the worst, if not the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Your mom was completely defenseless. I know dementia can try anyone’s patience. You could have gotten help. You weren’t alone. What you did was active acts of aggression. It’s heinous. It’s unexplainable.”
Last December, Haines’ mother was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Hazleton. Brenda Sloan, the victim’s granddaughter, testified Monday that she remembers rushing to the hospital in a “state of panic and confusion.”
Sloan said she’d previously had cameras installed at her grandmother’s home to make sure that her caretakers were performing their job. She said she was shocked to learn what her own aunt and the victim’s daughter had been doing.
Video showed that on Dec. 1, Haines turned on her own mother, slapping her across the face and shouting threats that she could end her life in minutes.
“You want to die? I can make you die if I choose to,” Haines said, warning that she could poison her mother’s food and kill her “in five minutes.”
Police, citing the video evidence, said Haines twice yanked the elderly woman’s nightgown off, taped her feet together, set a fan in front of her, and kicked her as she lay on the floor struggling to free herself.
The next day, police say the abuse escalated, and officers witnessed Haines trying to pull an empty trash bag over her mother’s head. They reported seeing her strike and kick her mother repeatedly, grab her by the neck and hair, and violently shake her head.
Investigators said Haines forced her mother out of the house by sliding her on her backside into 19-degree weather, leaving her outside wearing only a nightgown and one sock. She also tried to shove a rag into her mother’s mouth to silence her, threatening to kill her and boasting that she “had ways to do it” and had been “taught to kill a person in five minutes.”
Haines has been in jail since Dec. 17 and received 308 days of credit for time served on her sentence.
Sloan testified and spoke directly to Haines, her aunt, at Monday’s sentencing.
“You have no remorse or regret,” she said. “I can see it. It saddens me. Every day I woke up to a have a hole in my heart and soul.”
Sloan told Haines she could have simply reached out to her for help and she would have taken in her grandmother at her home.
Following Haines arrest, the victim in this case did move in with Sloan and showed signs of improvement until she passed away in February.
“You’re going to have to deal with grandpop if there’s an afterlife,” Sloan warned Haines.
Given a chance to speak, Haines said she felt alone in having to care for her mother an that she “bit off more than I can chew.”
“All I can say is I’m sorry,” she said, explaining that despite the incidents of abuse, she and her mother did share some good times together.
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