PENN FOREST TOWNSHIP -- A woman has been charged in Carbon County with neglecting a person she was paid to care for.
State police say when they were called to a home near Albrightsville over the weekend, they found a 61-year-old woman lying in filth on a mattress without sheets. After a medical examination, authorities determined the woman had serious health issues due to neglect.
Investigators say that woman had several large bed sores. She was found in a bed filled with her own feces, and she had multiple bruises.
Authorities accuse her caretaker of neglect, a caretaker who was being paid and who lives just one house away.
Grace Porter, 49, is the Penn Forest Township caretaker charged with felony neglect.
Police were alerted to the alleged neglect by Porter's own daughter.
Porter's daughter called authorities to a house on Buckhill Road in a private development where a 61-year-old woman was inside.
She begged them to check on the disabled woman her mother was supposed to be taking care of.
When authorities found that woman, she was in need of immediate medical attention.
"It's a tragedy because it happens a lot and she just seems to be the one who got caught," said Mary Powers.
Powers knows Grace Porter. It's hard for her to hear that Porter, a caregiver, could have neglected a woman to the point where that woman was lying in her own feces, with bed sores, and multiple bruises.
"Grace needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Nobody should do that to anybody. I don't care what reasoning it is. If you couldn't handle the job, you should've told your supervisors and had somebody there who could."
Police say the woman allegedly neglected had a prior medical condition that left her unable to speak, unable to say what happened to her.
Grace Porter was charged with felony neglect and she's now free after posting $150,000 bail.