Keeping a Watchful Eye in Nursing Homes

Doris Racher noticed small things that she had bought her 96-year-old mother, Eryetha Mayberry, a dementia patient at a nursing home in Oklahoma City, had been disappearing. Doris decided to place a motion-activated camera in her mother’s room. A couple months later, Doris was stunned at what she found in the recordings. The camera did not catch the petty thief, but it did catch nursing home aides abusing and taunting the elderly woman. Aides were caught stuffing latex gloves into Mrs. Mayberry’s mouth, while another taunted her, tapping her on the head, laughing. The footage also caught some aides tossing the woman onto her bed from her wheelchair. Mrs. Mayberry died soon after. Oklahoma, outraged by the Mayberry case, became the third state, along with New Mexico and Texas, to allow residents of long-term care to maintain video surveillance cameras in their rooms. In the last two years alone, at least five states have adopted similar trends. The government has even used these devices. A year ago, the New York state attorney general’s office demonstrated its methods at a national training program for state investigators. Scenes of abuse similar to Mrs. Mayberry’s case have been captured in New York, New Jersey Pennsylvania, Texas and other states by relatives who placed hidden cameras in their loved one’s room. If your elderly loved one has been seriously abused or neglected in their nursing home facility, contact Finkelstein & Partners for help today. Source: NYTimes