4:12pm Friday 23rd July 2010
By Robert Fisk
A THIEVING carer who stole from an elderly disabled woman has ‘got off lightly’, according to the victim’s family.
Angela Holman, aged 33, worked as Eileen Forte’s carer for two years and Mrs Forte thought of her as being like a granddaughter.
But a covert camera set up in the living room of her house in Riverside Close, St Paul’s Cray, showed Holman taking money from the 87-year-old stroke victim’s handbag.
She pleaded guilty to stealing a total of £60 and was sentenced at Bromley Magistrates Court last Wednesday (July 21) to a 150 hour community order.
Holman, of Blythe Hill, St Paul’s Cray, must also pay £40 compensation to the victim and £85 court costs.
Mrs Forte’s granddaughter Tina Priestman, 47, slammed the ‘derisory sentence’.
She said: “Our family is appalled and disgusted at the derisory sentence and I think the compensation was an insult.
“The compensation does not even cover what she stole and there is no compensation for the anguish that she put Nan through.
“She stole off an elderly vulnerable disabled lady and they just said ‘pay £40’.
Mrs Priestman, also of Riverside Close, says she thinks Holman should have been jailed.
She said: “We do not think the punishment fits the crime.”
“I would have liked her to get at least six months and then she would have probably do two or three and I think that would have been a just punishment.
“I think she has got off lightly.”
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