text: Media dis&dat: Connecticut nurse receives 15 months in prison for abuse of quadriplegic man
  Connecticut nurse receives 15 months in prison for abuse of quadriplegic man
  WATERBURY, Conn. — Attorneys compared it to the lower levels of Dante's "Inferno" or a chapter from Stephen King's "Misery."
  Robert "Buddy" Harkness, a 64-year-old quadriplegic whose curled, cerebral palsy-wracked body is held in a wheelchair, didn't call it hell, or torture, but said he would have rather have been dead than suffer the abuse his former nurse, Tammy Labrecque (pictured), heaped on him.
  Labrecque was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Jan. 7 in Waterbury Superior Court for a felony count of cruelty to persons and was handcuffed while Harkness watched from his motorized wheelchair.
  Police say Labrecque, Harkness' caretaker for 14 years, was seen on tape cursing at Harkness, debasing him, throwing him down on his bed, forcing his arm above his head, slapping him across the arms and legs and threatening to hit him, break his finger and tie him down.