A Colorado nurse has been formally charged with six new felony counts accusing him of groping -- or attempting to grope -- female patients at the UCHealth Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center during the past two years.
Thomas Mark Moore, 43, was charged with four counts of unlawful sexual contact and two counts of attempted unlawful sexual contact, the Weld County District Attorney's Office said Thursday.
According to a Greeley Police Department arrest affidavit, Moore allegedly sexually touched the patients often after he gave them morphine and other powerful painkillers, which made them fall asleep or lose consciousness. Several women said they awoke to find Moore groping their breasts.
Fort Collins police initially arrested Moore on Dec. 21, and investigators accuse him of sexually touching two female patients at Poudre Valley Hospital. The Fort Collins investigation led officials to identify victims in Greeley and Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
Fort Collins investigators, believing there were other victims, publicized the case last month.
A total of five Weld County women, who said Moore groped or tried to grope them at the Greeley emergency room between March 2014 and February 2015, have come forward -- often after they were contacted by Fort Collins police or heard news reports of investigations in that city. Greeley Police later interviewed the women.
Moore told some of the women he was a trained massage therapist. He told one woman he had drugged that he was massaging her because "I'm rubbing the morphine in." The woman told police she thought this was "very strange" but she didn't question what the nurse was doing because she'd never had morphine before.
Another woman told Greeley Police she had been treated by Moore several times from 2013 to 2015 when severe migraine headaches caused her to go to the UCHealth Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center.
The woman said she felt Moore acted weird and that he was stalking her because he had sent her a "friend request" on Facebook. Other alleged victims say the nurse tried to friend them on Facebook as well.
During another visit when Moore wasn't treating her, the migraine patient said Moore sat near her room watching her, which "creeped her out," according to the affidavit.
On at least two occasions, the woman told police that Moore gave her morphine for migraine pain. He then began to massage her shoulders, telling her he was a massage therapist and he had a home massage practice.
During the massage, she said Moore moved his hands from her shoulders to her chest and he would have touched her breasts but she shoved his hands away, the affidavit states.
The woman said she complained to UCHealth Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center about Moore's behavior in 2015 but "the staff didn't take her seriously," so she didn't report him to Greeley Police at the time, the affidavit states. She was recently interviewed by Fort Collins Police and this led her to be interviewed by Greeley Police investigators.
Authorities have now identified at least nine alleged victims in Colorado and Nebraska. The following is a breakdown by community:
- Fort Collins: Police have identified two alleged victims who say Moore groped them at Poudre Valley Hospital.
- Greeley: Five women say Moore sexually touched them -- or tried to -- while they were patients at UCHealth Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center.
- Scottsbluff, Nebraska: Two women accuse Moore of touching them sexually at Regional West Medical Center.
Moore was fired from the Scottsbluff hospital after a woman complained. Local police are now investigating two alleged sexual assaults at Regional West Medical Center, according to the Star-Herald newspaper.
Moore was fired from UCHealth Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center in June 2015, said Kelly Tracer, a spokeswoman for UCHealth, an umbrella organization for UCHealth Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center, Poudre Valley Hospital and Medical Center of the Rockies.
Tracer said UCHealth reported Moore to the Colorado Board of Nursing in June 2015. Yet, the board did not suspend Moore's nursing license until Jan. 6, 2016. The board cited his arrest in the Fort Collins case as the cause of his suspension.
Moore is from the town of Eaton, located approximately 25 miles southeast of Fort Collins.
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