A jury today found a male nurse guilty of sexually assaulting two male patients who were medically incapacitated and, while posing as a doctor, jerking off a third man under the guise of a medical exam at Anaheim's Western Medical Center.
Richard Alan Nolan, 48, of Buena Park, faces up to 34 years to life in state prison and lifetime sex offender registration at his Aug. 16 sentencing in Westminster.
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Heading into trial in May, the Weekly only knew about two male victims assaulted in 2009-2010.
Richard Alan Nolan, Hospital Nurse, Faces Trial for Alleged Sexual Assaults on Male Patients
A then-23-year-old patient at Western Med contacted police on July 30, 2010, to allege Nolan had fondled his genitals. Subsequent investigation turned up a man in his 20s who accused the licensed vocational nurse of sexually assaulting him at the hospital in June 2009. Nolan was arrested at the hospital on Aug. 18, 2010, on suspicion of felony sexual assault.
During the trial came the revelation that Nolan forcibly orally copulated a sleeping man in December 2009. One victim awoke from sedation to discover Nolan was blowing him.
The defense tried to argue at trial that the male patients were lying or had hallucinated.
The jury in Westminster today found Nolan guilty of one felony count each of forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by fraud, sexual battery on an institutionalized victim, and forcible oral copulation and one misdemeanor count of sexual battery on an institutionalized victim. A sentencing enhancement allegation for multiple victims was found true.
Nolan, who'd worked at Western Medical Anaheim about five years before the incidents, had his vocational nurse license suspended on Oct. 26, 2010. It expired last June 30.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.