Abuse of Mentally Ill Man: Three Cobb Residents Sent to Prison

MARIETTA, GA -- Three Powder Springs residents are going to jail after pleading guilty of abusing a mentally ill man at a local personal care home.

Edith Mae Page, 56; husband, Osvaldo Cruz Hernandez, 56; and Stephen Patrick Caldwell, 33, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two counts of false imprisonment and one count of abuse of a disabled person.

In addition, Page and Hernandez each pleaded guilty to one count of operating an unlicensed personal care home.

Page’s business is known as Top of the Line residential personal care, and the mentally disabled victim went into her care in December 2012. On the morning of Jan. 16, 2013, the man became agitated and threw a lamp into a wall at a home on Meadows Road. After an altercation, employees of the business tied him up using straps found in the garage. He was then put into a van and driven to another home on Brownsville Road. Both homes were owned and operated by Page and Hernandez as part of the business.

At the Brownsville location, the man’s clothes were stripped off and he was put into a diaper and tied to a bed for several hours. The man was never taken to a hospital, as he requested, and later other caregivers reported he had two black eyes, a swollen jaw, and bruises about his body. The incident lasted for hours, and the victim testified that he was tied in the bed all night long.

“The core of this case is a lack of empathy for people with mental illness. The Defendants humiliated a 32-year-old man who came to them for help,” said ADA Jason Marbutt, who prosecuted the case with ADA Greg Epstein. “They tied him up. They stripped his pants and put him in a diaper. They tied him to a bed for hours. They then had the audacity to suggest that they did it for his own good.”

All three were sentenced to 10 years in prison, with some of that time to serve in custody and the rest on probation.

Charges are pending against a fourth defendant, John Edward Mitchell, 40, of Hiram, who had medical issues that prevented him from being in court this week.