A nurse accused of hurting infants in a Virginia hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit pleaded no contest Thursday to nine counts of felony child abuse, reaching a deal with prosecutors that she will never again work as a nurse or with children.
Erin Elizabeth Ann Strotman, 27, was arrested in January 2025 and charged in a single case after several newborns suffered seemingly inexplicable fractures, causing Henrico Doctors’ Hospital to abruptly shutter its NICU amid a police investigation. The list of alleged crimes grew in the following months, eventually mounting to 20 charges accusing her of abusing nine babies in incidents dating back to 2022.
The plea deal dropped the malicious wounding charges, which require prosecutors to prove intent, but retained one felony charge for each of the nine injured babies. By pleading no contest, Strotman was convicted but did not admit guilt.
The terms of the plea agreement mandate that Strotman will be sentenced to no more than three years in prison. She will remain out on bond until her sentencing on June 5, when the victims’ families will be able to testify.
“I have always made it a priority to ensure that we would be able to ask the Court to hold Erin Strotman accountable for all of the families being impacted,” Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor said in a statement after the plea. “We made a promise to these families that we would continue to work on this matter, and I intended for us to keep that promise.”
Strotman’s defense attorneys argued that the security footage of Strotman in the NICU did not show any sign that she meant to injure the babies.
“I think it’s a reasonable and just resolution of the charges,” said Jeffrey Everhart, a lawyer for Strotman. “We are satisfied that Erin Strotman never intended to hurt any of these children. We also became satisfied that she probably caused some of these injuries, if not all of them.”
In the aftermath of Strotman’s arrest, the Virginia Department of Health launched an investigation into Henrico Doctors’ Hospital and found that the hospital failed to report suspected abuse in a timely manner after four infants were injured in 2023. A year later, three more babies experienced fractures. The report concludes that “the facility failed to protect and promote each patient’s rights” by waiting longer than the time federally required to report suspected child abuse and by being unable to identify all staff members who came into contact with NICU patients.
The hospital has since provided a plan of correction, and the NICU began admitting patients again in February 2025.
On Thursday, prosecutors presented evidence they said they would have used had the case gone to trial, including a detailed timeline:
The first investigation began Sept. 21, 2023, when Henrico Doctors’ Hospital leaders filed a report for “non-accidental trauma” with Henrico County Child Protective Services, identifying four infants in the NICU with “unexplained and concerning fractures.” CPS and Henrico County Police concluded that the first of the four fractures occurred at the start of August, almost seven weeks before the hospital notified authorities. One baby, identified as T.M. in court records, had bruising and five fractures — including a fractured rib and fractured femur.
Before notifying CPS, prosecutors say the hospital hired a law firm to conduct an internal investigation. As a result of that investigation, the hospital put Strotman on paid leave.
Investigators learned that a radiologist at the hospital had become concerned and created a document titled “Windows of Opportunity” to determine when the four babies could have been injured. The document narrows suspects down to Strotman and one other person. A child abuse pediatrician who later reviewed the victims’ records believed the time frame might be broader and identified six employees who all had access to the four injured infants.
Ultimately, prosecutors say, the 2023 investigation failed to identify the abuser but found that the hospital’s NICU practices had hindered the investigation and needed to be overhauled. Among the issues named by prosecutors, the hospital had “virtually no documentation” of who cared for an infant, did not have cameras inside NICU rooms and did not comply with the legal obligation to report suspected abuse to CPS in a timely manner.
In the wake of the investigation, the hospital installed cameras in every NICU patient room and offered additional employee trainings on identifying and reporting child abuse. Strotman was reinstated and began caring for babies again on Sept. 17, 2024, though she initially was required to work alongside another employee.
Two months later, CPS received another report of suspected abuse, with prosecutors saying Baby Y.H. had a “constellation of injuries.” Investigators noticed there had been no inexplicable injuries to infants during the year Strotman had been on leave.
Detectives were reviewing thousands hours of surveillance footage when two more reports of babies with fractures came in December 2024. Prosecutors likened trying to find the moment they were injured to searching for “a needle in a haystack,” and periods of blacked out footage to protect nursing mothers’ privacy further complicated the process.
Then they found footage from Nov. 10, 2024 of Strotman with Baby Y.H. In the video, prosecutors say, Strotman held the infant’s legs and pressed down with her body weight. She then pressed the baby’s legs back until his ankles touched his head. Baby Y.H. suffered fractures in both legs, prosecutors said. Strotman was arrested and charged in connection with his injuries.
After her arrest, investigators discovered more concerning video footage of Strotman with three other babies in 2024. In the footage, prosecutors say, Strotman’s treatment of the infants was “materially worse” when she was alone than when she was working with someone else. Officials from the hospital, CPS, Henrico County Police Department and the Virginia Department of Health reviewed the videos and found that Strotman’s treatment of infants fell below the appropriate standard of care.
As news spread, a family whose baby had been treated at the hospital’s NICU in 2022 came forward with concerns. Altogether, Strotman was convicted of abusing one baby in 2022, four babies in 2023 and four babies in 2024. Although there is only video footage babies injured in 2024, she admitted in interviews with detectives that she had been treating infants the same way since she started in the NICU in 2022, according prosecutors.
Prosecutors said Strotman told investigators she never intended to hurt the babies and said that some of her rough movements were just attempts to check for gas or get milk out of the back of babies’ throats.
“It can be perceived as a little too rough,” she said of the video of her leaning her weight on a premature infant, according to prosecutors. “It looks like I did lean my weight on to him … but in the moment it didn’t feel too rough. A little? Yeah. After seeing the video? Yeah.”
The post Virginia NICU nurse accused of abusing infants takes plea deal appeared first on Washington Post.
