A former nursing home employee has avoided probation revocation after being convicted of sexual exploitation of a minor at a Kalona care facility. In March 2023, while working at Friendship Home in Audubon, workers there reported the man sent them cell-phone photos of himself masturbating and was taking videos of his co-workers. (Photo illustration by Iowa Capital Dispatch, with Friendship Home photo via Google Earth. Text-message photo is deliberately blurred.)
An Iowa judge has decided not to revoke the probation of a former nursing home worker accused of sexual impropriety at three different Iowa care facilities.
Martell Guider, 37, was convicted last fall of sexual exploitation of a minor and given a 25-year suspended prison sentence and five years of probation.
The charge stemmed from allegations that in January 2024, while working at the Pleasantview Home in Kalona, Guider was acted inappropriately with a 17-year-old minor and later shared with others an explicit photo of the girl. According to the police, Guider threatened the minor to induce her to send him the photo via the social-messaging platform Snapchat.
As a condition of probation, Guider was required to maintain employment and a residence of some kind. In December, Guider’s probation officer notified the court that Guider was in violation of his probation by living out of his car and that his employment at Taco Bell had ended after he was fired.
Two weeks ago, Washington County District Court Judge Shawn Sowers ruled that Guider’s probation would not be revoked, which would have resulted in the 25-year prison term being imposed. Sowers ordered Guider to live at either the Washington County Jail or a state residential correctional facility for 180 days “or until maximum benefits have been achieved.”
Prior to the incident at Pleasantview Home, Guider worked at nursing homes located in Audubon and Correctionville.
In Audubon, a female caregiver at Friendship Home filed a complaint with the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing in 2023 about Guider’s behavior.
The woman – who filed similar complaints with management at the home and with city police – alleged Guider had been making suggestive remarks to female coworkers, had sent them photos of himself masturbating, had recorded video of one worker as she provided care for a resident, and had invited some of his female colleagues out to his car where he kept a bottle of Seagram’s Crown Royal.
The complainant provided the Iowa Capital Dispatch with screenshots of Guider’s alleged text messages, which include two photos of a man’s genitals and two photos of a man holding a bottle of Crown Royal inside a vehicle.
Audubon police later acknowledged fielding complaints about Guider’s conduct at Friendship Home but said they didn’t pursue the matter. Officials at DIAL rejected the complaint they received about Guider, reportedly because the agency felt the matter was best addressed by management at Friendship Home.
Six months after the incident in Audubon, Guider was working at Correctionville Specialty Care when he was the target of a complaint that he had raped a resident of the home.
State records show the alleged victim in that case told management an employee took her to his car in the facility’s parking lot, told her he was a musician, played some of his music to her, offered her a drink of Seagram’s Crown Royal from a bottle he kept in his car, and then forced her to have oral sex with him.
According to state inspectors, the alleged rape victim, who is not cognitively impaired, also alleged the worker sent her a video of himself masturbating and provided a copy of the video.
After the woman reported the alleged rape, officials at Correctionville Specialty Care evicted the woman from the facility and dropped her off at a homeless shelter, according to state inspectors.
Guider was terminated from employment at the Correctionville home, but state inspectors say the facility’s parent company, Care Initiatives of West Des Moines, continued to provide work for him in other Iowa nursing homes that it operates.
No criminal charges were filed in the case.