(Iowa Capital Dispatch) – A state-certified caregiver has been arrested and charged with sexually exploiting a minor while employed by an Iowa nursing home. Over the past 12 months, Martell Guider, a 36-year-old male certified nursing assistant, has been the subject of complaints regarding a series of alleged incidents involving sexual impropriety at three Iowa nursing homes located in Audubon, Correctionville and Kalona. The most recent case, and the only one in which criminal charges have been filed, involves Guider’s employment at the Pleasantview Home in Kalona.

According to police and prosecutors, officials at Pleasantview confronted Guider sometime in January after multiple employees raised concerns that he was being inappropriate with a minor who was present at the home but not a resident.

Martell Guider, a state-certified nursing assistant. (Photo courtesy of the Washington County Jail)

Police allege that after his supervisors talked to him about the complaints, Guider sent explicit photos of the minor to his employer. According to the police, Guider had threatened the minor to induce her to send him the photos via the social-messaging platform Snapchat. When asked about the photos, Guider allegedly acknowledged he had saved them for his sexual gratification.

According to the police reports, Guider’s colleagues at Pleasantview also complained that he had been making unwanted advances toward female co-workers in the nursing home. He was then barred from the care facility, according to police. Guider is now charged with sexual exploitation of a minor by causing the minor to engage in a sex act; sexual exploitation through the use of photographs; possession of material depicting a minor engaged in sex; and first-degree harassment. He has yet to enter a plea in the case. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 9.

Court records show that at the time of his arrest, Guider was employed through Shiftkey, a temp agency that provides workers for health care facilities. Prior to his arrest in the Pleasantview case, Guider was fired from two other Iowa nursing homes amid allegations of sexual impropriety.

The first of those cases dates back to April 2023, when a female caregiver at Audubon’s Friendship Home filed a complaint with the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing about Guider’s behavior. Six months later, Guider was working at Correctionville Specialty Care when he was the target of a complaint that he had raped a resident of the home.

No charges were filed in either the Correctionville case or the Audubon case. Audubon police have acknowledged they fielded at least two complaints about Guider’s conduct at Friendship Home but didn’t pursue the matter. Audubon Police Chief Coby Gust said the complainants provided text messages and photos and expressed concern that the man’s behavior could spill over into his interactions with vulnerable residents, Gust said.

According to the complainant in the Friendship Home case, officials at the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals rejected her complaint about Guider last April, allegedly telling her the issues she raised were best addressed by management at the home since they involved worker-to-worker conduct that had no actual or potential impact on residents.

When asked about that, DIAL spokeswoman Diane McCool said the agency “cannot comment on whether information was received regarding a particular individual.”