Inset: Cindy Desser (Bensalem Police Department). Background: Desser allegedly slamming a special needs toddler in her crib in Pennsylvania (Saltz Mongeluzzi and Bendesky).
A Pennsylvania home health care company ignored a nurse”s “long history” of abusing young children which led to her slamming a 3-year-old in her care and withholding the girl’s breathing tube as she gasped for air, a lawsuit alleges.
David and Meredith Nastasi filed a negligence lawsuit against Lincoln Healthcare Services LLC, which is doing business as Team Select Home Care, and 58-year-old Cindy Desser, who is also facing a charge of endangering the welfare of a child for her alleged treatment of the plaintiffs’ daughter identified in the suit as Z.N.
Per the lawsuit, the girl was born at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in October 2023 with numerous ailments including missing her lower half of her left ribs, abdominal muscles and her left lung. She spent some nine months in the hospital, undergoing six significant surgeries. Once she made it home in late 2024, she was ventilator dependent and in need of round-the-clock nursing care.
The Nastasis hired Team Select which sent Desser to serve as a night nurse.
“Z.N. was medically fragile and after all she had been through to just make it home, Z.N. needed to be cared for by nurses who were compassionate, kind, and attentive to her needs,” the lawsuit said. “Instead, Team Select sent a monster named Cindy Desser … into Plaintiffs’ home.”
On the night of May 25, the plaintiffs allege, Desser “repeatedly choke slammed” the girl with “such force that it rattled Z.N.’s crib and knocked over medical monitoring equipment.”
“Upon information and belief, Desser had a long history of abusing infants in her care and had worked stints with numerous other home health care companies that had either fired Desser or separated from Desser on poor terms by the time she was hired by Team Select in late 2024,” the lawsuit states. “Desser’s abuse of Z.N. was not the first time she had done this, and tragically it was not the last. While Desser was out on bail for the criminal charges stemming from her attack on Z.N., she somehow managed to obtain employment with yet another home health care agency and abused another medically fragile toddler in Bucks County.”
Jeffrey P. Goodman of Saltz Mongeluzzi and Bendesky who is representing the plaintiffs argues that Team Select knew or should have known that Desser was “morally unfit to care for children.” Goodman also alleges that Desser often fell asleep on the job which caused her to miss important medical alarms.
On one occasion, Meredith Nastasi had to “rush into” her daughter’s room to wake up Desser, who was asleep with headphones on as an audible alert was going off that the girl’s oxygen levels were below 85 percent, the suit stated.
The parents also complained that Desser allegedly wasn’t logging enough data into the system about the girl’s spiking vitals during the nurse’s shifts. Team Select ignored the parents’ concerns and never addressed them with Desser, according to the lawsuit.
“David and Meredith Nastasi put their trust in the hands of a nurse whom Team Select represented to be compassionate and capable of safely caring for Z.N. Instead, Team Select sent a monster into their home. This is every parent’s worst nightmare,” Goodman said in a statement.
As Law&Crime previously reported, a probable cause arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime said Desser served as an overnight nurse for the girl at the family’s home on Locust Avenue in Bensalem, a Philadelphia suburb. In October, the girl’s mother noticed some bruising on her inner thigh while she was changing her daughter’s diaper.
The mom took the girl to a hospital, where doctors determined the bruise was in the shape of a thumb print.
When the parents reviewed surveillance camera footage from the girl’s room, Desser was allegedly seen slapping the girl on multiple occasions. She also allegedly “aggressively” threw the girl around her crib. One time, the girl apparently pulled out her tracheostomy tube. The video allegedly showed Desser “taking her time” putting the tube back in, before saying “you did this” while the girl was “gasping for air.” Desser was also seen sleeping on the job, per the complaint.
The defendant works for Dynamic Home Health Care. Cops noted that she was also in violation of several of the company’s rules and ethics.
The girl’s parents, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke with local ABC affiliate WPVI. They told the outlet that Desser appealed to them because she had 20 years of experience and took care of another child who had the same lung disease as the girl. The girl was born prematurely and weighed just 14 ounces at birth and is in need of special medical care.
“She likes nights,” the mom told WPVI about Desser. “You don’t find that. It was almost like too good to be true.”
Unfortunately for the girl and her parents, it appears that it was.
Watching the video of their daughter gasping for air after Desser allegedly withheld her tracheostomy tube was especially hard.
“This was the most disturbing one. Thank God my daughter is so strong,” the mother told the outlet. “It was just horrific. I just couldn’t believe it. It’s like almost like monsters come out at night.”
The father called the whole situation a nightmare. Another alleged incident also stood out to him.
“All our little girl did was sit up and look at her for a minute and she got shoved to the ground. It’s really sick and horrible,” he said.
He hopes Desser loses her nursing license and faces justice.
“I just hope she gets to sit in a room with other people that did bad things,” he told WPVI. “A snake can shed its skin so many times and it’s still a snake. So, you gotta watch out.”
WPVI reports that Desser has since been fired from her job. Her next court date is set for April 7.
