A LONG-TIME care worker hit and maltreated seven residents at a nursing home, York Crown Court heard.

The oldest was aged 92, the youngest 74.

Many of Gordon Woodward's victims had dementia and all needed help with everyday personal care, said Dan Cordey, prosecuting.

In a single day, he maltreated six residents including tearing a woman's skin as he helped her use the toilet and hitting a blind woman in the face with a pillow.

Other members of staff helped the victims and reported his actions to the authorities and Woodward was arrested.

"You have lost the career you had in the caring profession and thank goodness you have," Judge Andrew Stubbs QC told Woodward.

The victims had been "as vulnerable as they could be" and each had been entrusted to the nursing home by their families.

"In two days, inexplicably, following a long career as a carer, you betrayed the trust that these families placed in you and treated the residents of the care home with a complete lack of respect and with a callous disregard for their needs," said the judge.

"Everyone has the right to be treated with respect, notwithstanding their physical and mental state, how ill they are and where they are living."

Woodward, 54, of Longleat Avenue, Bridlington, pleaded guilty to seven charges of ill-treating a person who lacked mental capacity at Woodlands Nursing Home in Filey.

He was given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years on condition he does 200 hours' unpaid work.

For him, Alex Menary said he had had a long career in the caring industry "in difficult circumstances".

He now works in a bakery.

Mr Cordey said the first victim was 78 years old and was ill-treated on a different day to the others. Woodward "drag lifted" him into a wheelchair without asking whether that was what he wanted or needed.

The second victim was 84 years old. Woodward had suddenly appeared in her room and grinned and laughed as he took her glasses off her face. A second carer got them back for her.

On the same day, Woodward manhandled a 74-year-old man away from where he was standing, claiming, incorrectly, that the elderly man was "in the way".

He also told a 90-year-old woman trying to attract his attention words to the effect of "keep your dirty or filthy hands off me" said Mr Cordey.

A woman in her 80s with fragile skin screamed when Woodward's rough handling as he and another carer assisted her to the toilet tore her skin.

Woodward hit a registered blind woman in her 80s in the face with a pillow and deliberately caused a 92-year-old woman to scream by pushing a pillow at her face, said Mr Cordey.

Mr Menary said Woodward had lost his good character and had committed no offences since.