A Fair Oaks, California assisted living facility was shut down last week by the state after a family member placed a granny cam and caught some pretty astonishing things on tape. According to news reports, one staffer was caught violently shaking a resident in her wheelchair, and dumping the chair backward. Another clip shows the resident upside down in her wheelchair, crying and alone.
The family of Kyong Hui Duncan, 73, placed a granny cam at her bedside to make sure the home knew someone was watching. The staff was aware of the camera, which was in plain view. It was intended as a deterrent. Unfortunately, it did not prevent abuse, it merely memorialized it. The family became concerned about their matriarch when she suffered mysterious bruises and infections that went untreated. While looking for an alternative living arrangement, Duncan passed away. After her passing, her grandson reviewed the video images and saw the abuse.
"Shocking" does not begin to describe my reaction to this story. I picture my own 89 year old grandmother, helpless, and suffering in this way. I imagine my children, and wonder how I would react if I found them turned upside in their stroller at daycare. As an advocate for the elderly, I know the grief and guilt a family feels when they place their trust in a care home, only to learn that it was violated because staff didn't do their job. Maybe they did not recognize an infection. Maybe they let grandma get dehydrated. But this type of abuse is over the top. More than one staff member would have had to participate in turning someone upside down in a wheel chair, and who knows how many other heard her cries or saw her in this condition, and did not help her. For the family, they thought the camera would provide added protection. In the end, it provided haunting images which the family replays in their mind's eye.
Though the tapes were not enough to help Duncan, they did play a pivotal role in closing the facility and preventing further abuse of other residents. Because if this was happening to Duncan, it was happening to others.
How does it come to be that even with knowledge that watchful cameras were functional, facility staff was so emboldened and indifferent to human suffering that they went about the business of abusing helpless elders? Do working conditions provoke such uncaring acts? Does lack of facility oversight and inadequate and ineffectual management and nursing supervisors foster such behavior? What punishment is severe enough, civilly and/or criminally to act as an adequate deterrent?
This story, and others we have published, serve to underscore that indeed abuse and neglect occurring in elder care facilities and that steps need to be taken to hold the perpetrators accountable and to hold them out as examples in the court of public opinion to deter such abuse in the future.
