The family of an elderly Alzheimer’s patient is suing a nursing home
near
Montreal after a hidden camera allegedly revealed the patient being
mistreated by staff.
The images were captured by Chantal Contant, whose 78-year-old father
Leandre was a patient at the CLSC-CHSLD Meilleur long-term care
facility in
L’Assomption, Que.
Video footage reveals poor hygiene & an orderly dragging a frail
Contant on the floor after a fall in Dec. 2005.
The orderly has since been fired and is facing possible criminal
charges.
CTV’s Stephane Giroux, reporting from Montreal, said the family had
hired
high-profile Montreal lawyer Jean-Pierre Menard and was suing the
long-term care facility for $80,000.
“Chantal felt that there was something wrong, so she installed a hidden
camera inside his room and she caught an orderly dragging her father
on the
floor in a very rough manner,” Giroux told CTV News Thursday.
Giroux said after the family complained about the treatment, the
orderly was
promptly fired and is still under investigation for “possible criminal”
actions.
However, Giroux continued, the problems did not end there.
“Mrs. Contant said the staff became extremely cold and uncooperative the
second she denounced the woman who abused her father,” said Giroux.
Contant then reinstalled the camera in her father’s bedroom, only to
find he
was still being neglected and mistreated.
Footage revealed staff changing her father’s diaper “without cleaning
him
up” first and her father not being fed properly.
“This is an Alzheimer’s patient who cannot complain, who cannot talk,
who
cannot do anything,” Giroux said.
After several complaints to the nursing home, Contant decided to hire
Menard
to take legal action on behalf of her father.

October 12, 2006