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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-based home health care company allegedly overlooked a nurse’s “extensive history” of mistreating young children, which resulted in a 3-year-old girl under her care being violently handled and deprived of her breathing tube as she struggled to breathe, according to a lawsuit.
David and Meredith Nastasi have filed a negligence lawsuit against Lincoln Healthcare Services LLC, operating as Team Select Home Care, and 58-year-old Cindy Desser. Desser is also facing charges of endangering the welfare of a child due to her alleged conduct toward the couple’s daughter, referred to as Z.N. in the legal documents.
The lawsuit details that Z.N. was born in October 2023 at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, suffering from several medical conditions, including the absence of her lower left ribs, abdominal muscles, and left lung. After undergoing six major surgeries and spending nine months in the hospital, she returned home in late 2024, requiring a ventilator and continuous nursing care.
The Nastasi family employed Team Select, which assigned Desser as the night nurse for their daughter.
“Z.N. was extremely vulnerable and, after all she endured to come home, needed caring, compassionate, and attentive nurses,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, Team Select placed a predator named Cindy Desser in the 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.