A REDDITCH care home bully who narrowly avoided prison for mistreated elderly residents is now behind bars – after bullying staff at a shop where she was carrying out unpaid work.

‘Horrible’ Debra Bott had denied breaching a suspended sentence she was given for ill-treating two residents who ‘lacked capacity’ at the Field View care home in Crabbs Cross, Redditch.

Bott, aged 55, of Alcester Road, Studley, at the time, was sentenced to six months in prison suspended for two years and ordered to do 250 hours of unpaid work and to pay £500 costs.

Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told Bott, who had originally denied the charges, she had ‘avoided custody by a hair’s breadth’ – and he reserved any breaches of the order to himself.

As a result she was back in front of him in August when she denied breaching the suspended sentence by failing to comply with the unpaid work element of the order.

Following an adjournment of the breach case for her to get legal representation, she appeared at Worcester Crown Court, where Judge Lockhart is now sitting.

And after hearing that Bott had been bullying towards a member of staff in a shop where she was supposed to be doing her unpaid work, and on other occasions had failed to turn up to do the work, he found she had breached the order by her behaviour.

Rejecting a submission by Blondel Thompson, defending, that she should be given another chance, Judge Lockhart ordered Bott to serve three months of the suspended sentence.

Jailing her, he told Bott: “There is no mitigation. I gave you the clearest possible warning about what would happen if you failed to comply.”

At the original hearing prosecutor Gerald Bermingham said the case involved the ill-treatment of a man and a woman at the Field View care home, where Bott was the deputy manager.

Both victims were vulnerable, and the 94-year-old woman, who was blind, partially deaf and suffered from dementia, had been there for 20 years, ‘and to move her away from familiar sounds and smells would be cruel.’

So she found Bott’s threats to get the police to threaten her and to put her outside in the garden particularly disturbing.

Matters came to light after another staff member raised concerns with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that Bott should not be working in the care system because she had ‘a terrible temper.’

Another staff member said that in 2014 it was the norm for Bott to be ‘horrible’ towards the 94-year-old female resident and to verbally abuse her.

The old lady had a curved spine, making it hard for her to raise her head, and staff members were concerned at the rough way Bott would grab her chin and pull her head up at meal times.

She was also seen on several occasions pushing the old lady’s chair in, trapping her fingers between it and the table.

But when she was questioned Bott denied the allegations and claimed they were malicious complaints.

Glyn Samuel, defending at that hearing, said Bott, who accepted her behaviour had been wholly unacceptable, had always worked in the care industry.

But she had resigned once the CQC came in, and the only work she could get was in the bakery at a local supermarket.

She has since claimed in court that ‘because of all the media’ she had had to move and leave her job.