A grand jury report is revealing details about an alleged attack on an elderly resident at Gracedale Nursing Home in Northampton County, Pa., where a registered nurse is accused of performing an exorcism on the woman.<\/p>\n
The report stems from a single incident on June 23, 2025, at the county-run facility in Nazareth, which serves medically challenged patients.<\/p>\n
Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta described the incident as an early morning attack on an elderly woman with significant health issues who lived at Gracedale.<\/p>\n
Baratta said registered nurse Octavia Robinson assaulted the woman while claiming the resident had “demons” inside of her.<\/p>\n
According to the grand jury report, the woman’s two elderly roommates tried for more than 30 minutes to get help from Gracedale staff and law enforcement.<\/p>\n
The grand jury report also details broader concerns at Gracedale, including a lack of security, patients being assaulted by staff and other patients and deplorable sanitary conditions. It also describes cases in which residents wandered away from the facility and were later found by police.<\/p>\n
Baratta said Gracedale has faced severe staffing shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Northampton County officials said the facility is now under new administration and plans to address its weaknesses, with corrective action already underway.<\/p>\n
County Executive Tara Zrinski acknowledged that some of Gracedale’s financial challenges were caused by delays in Medicaid reimbursements. Zrinski also said plans are in the works to improve the facility’s long-term future, including evaluating a modernized facility and resources aimed at strengthening care and sustainability.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC Philadelphia. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC Philadelphia journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A grand jury report is revealing details about an alleged attack on an elderly resident at Gracedale Nursing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,434,28],"class_list":["post-283302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}