Jurors have awarded $35 million to a Sacramento-area woman raped while in intensive care at Dignity Health’s Methodist Hospital by a former nurse now serving prison time for rapes at other area medical facilities, the woman’s attorneys announced.
The award includes $20 million in punitive damages against Dignity Health, which operates the south Sacramento hospital. The former patient was conscious but unable to move or speak when she was sexually attacked by the nurse in the intensive care unit on three consecutive nights in December 2016.
“The jury’s verdict sends a clear message that hospitals must protect their most vulnerable patients from harm,” said plaintiff’s attorney Natalie Weatherford in a statement announcing the verdict. “The plaintiff has suffered immensely, and the jury’s verdict is the final step in her journey towards beginning to heal.”
Sacramento Superior Court jurors found Dignity Health negligent in failing to protect the woman from sexual abuse. Jurors also found the health system violated state laws designed to protect dependent patients and that Methodist leaders failed to investigate the woman’s reports and failed to discipline the nurse in the attacks.
“We are very proud of this brave plaintiff for standing up to the hospital that failed to protect her,” said plaintiff’s attorney John Taylor. “Trials like these protect the community and make hospitals safer for everyone.”
Gregory Allen Harms appears in a 2019 booking photo. A Sacramento County jury has awarded $35 million to a woman who was sexually assaulted by Harms while she was a patient in intensive care at Methodist Hospital in December 2016, and Harms is serving a 29 years to life prison sentence for separate assaults in 2011 and 2019. Folsom Police Department
The nurse, Gregory Allen Harms, is serving 29 years to life in state prison for the sexual assaults of two patients. One was incapacitated and recovering from surgery at a Carmichael surgery center in April 2011. Harms attacked a second woman in January 2019 at a Folsom hospital, according to previous Bee reporting.
The Folsom victim also was incapacitated, unable to move her arms and legs and unable to speak, when she was attacked. Harms, the victim’s assigned nurse, tied her hand to her bed before attacking her.
Harms was convicted of the 2011 and 2019 rapes in Sacramento Superior Court in 2022. Now 68, Harms serving his sentence at California State Prison, Corcoran, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
As in the 2019 Folsom attack, Harms was the Methodist patient’s assigned nurse. The woman regained her speech months later in 2017 and told her speech therapist, who called Methodist Hospital authorities.
Attorneys for the woman alleged at trial that Methodist officials failed to investigate her reports and later told law enforcement and the woman’s family that she was likely suffering from “ICU dementia.” The condition causes hallucinations and disorientation, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys.
But attorneys said the woman saw Harms in a news report following Harms’ arrest in the 2019 Folsom attacks and contacted Sacramento authorities, who told her that victims in the 2011 and 2019 attacks had come forward.
Officials from Dignity Health said they were unable to comment on the litigation, citing patient privacy laws.
“At Methodist Hospital, the wellbeing of our patients is our central mission,” a spokesperson said Monday.
This story was originally published March 23, 2026 at 2:11 PM.
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Darrell Smith is a local reporter for The Sacramento Bee. He joined The Bee in 2006 and previously worked at newspapers in Palm Springs, Colorado Springs and Marysville. Smith was born and raised at Beale Air Force Base and lives in Elk Grove.