BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: Protections fall short in in-home care
5th December 2016 · 0 Comments
By Jennifer Marguilis
Contributing Writer
Part II of a two-part series
(New America Media) – A retired pharmacist, Roland Sergio, 68, was so careful about his appearance that he mowed the lawn in a starched button-down, slacks and penny loafers. His mind was still keen but his body was failing—he had heart blockage, a cancerous tumor growing in his lung, and polycystic kidney disease.
After the Brockton, Massachusetts man had open-heart surgery, doctors started radiation to shrink the tumor and dialysis to filter his blood. His wife, Gail, 66, had Alzheimer’s disease and got confused when their adult daughter came to take Roland to dialysis.
Unable to remember where her husband had gone, she would pace the house, crying and wringing her hands. Gail went over to the neighbor’s in tears one day. The family was reassured by the local Home Instead Senior Care franchise that they had the “perfect caregiver” to stay with Gail. But the company had recently pulled that aide, Debbie Blair, from another home, following the family’s extensive complaints about her poor conduct and allegations of possible theft.
Jewelry Pawned for Thousands
Blair started coming over three times a week for six-hour periods. She seemed competent and likable. Although a few days after Blair started, Gail told her children she didn’t feel comfortable, Chris and Julie shrugged it off. Their mom was suffering from cognitive decline; she could have said that about anyone.
Court documents would later reveal that the day after Blair first sat with Gail, she received $750 from Timeless Antiques, a pawnshop in the heart of Brockton, for a starfish charm.
The thefts continued: On January 3, 2011, Blair brought the shop a men’s bracelet, a heart-shaped necklace and two rings, for which she was given $1,800. In the six weeks that she worked for the Sergios, Blair visited that pawnshop at least 13 times, receiving at least $6,180 for the stolen flatware, watches, rings, necklaces and gold earrings.
One day in early February Julie was in her parents’ bedroom looking for the Kay Jewelers open-heart pendant she had gifted her mom after her dad survived triple heart bypass surgery. Her own heart started pounding painfully in her chest: The jewelry box was nearly empty. Chris was visiting and she called him into the bedroom. They stared at each other in silent disbelief.
Then they called the police.
Middleborough Detective Simonne Ryder was one of the officers dispatched to Sergios’ home. A specialist in elder affairs, Ryder has been investigating elder abuse for over a decade.
It’s a tricky assignment, she says, and not only because of the emotions involved. Often, Ryder explains, families of older adults who have been victimized are reluctant to report the crimes.
Sometimes it’s because they’re embarrassed about having allowed a criminal into their parents’ home. Sometimes it’s because they are afraid of negative repercussions. These caregivers, Ryder points out, often have the keys to the house, know the families’ work schedules, and know how vulnerable their loved ones are.
And the eyewitnesses to the crimes—the frail adults needing care— are sometimes unable to speak, so they cannot report what is happening; or they’re suffering from dementia, so their reports are garbled or unreliable. Their families might not believe them. Some older adults who witness bad behavior on the part of aides keep quiet because they don’t want to be placed in a nursing home.
Compounding the problem is that caregivers thought to be abusing elders are rarely brought to trial. “You run into issues: Is the elderly victim competent to testify at trial? Even if they are, are they physically able to withstand the stress of going into court?”
David Yannetti, a Boston-based criminal defense lawyer who spent 10 years working as a prosecutor, says. “Only a fraction of elder abuse cases are actually prosecuted.”
Under Arrest
On February 15, 2011 three police officers went to Debbie Blair’s apartment in East Bridgewater and placed her under arrest on charges of larceny. After the arrest, Home Instead told local journalists they had no prior knowledge of any wrongdoing and her background checks had come back clean.
“The safety and security of seniors is our top priority,” Dan Wieberg, spokesperson for Home Instead Senior Care, asserts via email. “We have extensive policies and procedures in place to prevent fraudulent activity. Our franchise owners conduct thorough background checks and drug screenings before placing any employee with a client. We also offer information and resources for seniors and their families at www.protectseniorsfromfraud.com.”
But court documents tell a different story: When Blair was hired she was in a methadone treatment program, recovering from a drug addiction. If Home Instead had done a drug screening—either before they hired her or once the previous family complained—they presumably would have discovered that she was not clean.
Still, in some ways, the families Blair stole from got off easy. In one highly publicized incident when a family complained to A.M.S. Home Care Solutions, a home care agency based in San Diego, that their mother, age 98, was not receiving adequate cared, the director dismissed their concerns. The family installed video cameras and caught footage of two male caregivers sexually molesting their mother, who was paralyzed from a stroke.
A California Case
In another case that never made the headlines, a frail woman in her 90s who had round-the-clock care from a private agency came to the attention of Stanton Lawson, CFO of Sequoia Senior Solutions, a home caregiver placement agency in Northern California.
The woman’s financial advisor, worried that something was wrong, asked Lawson to check on her.
Her beautiful house on a five-acre estate was almost empty: Agency-sent caregivers had stolen all the client’s paintings, furniture, and even her dishes. She had sores all over her body from being confined to her bed.
“The only thing left was the satellite dish, the big screen TV, and the bed,” Lawson remembers. “My guess is they were not supervising their employees. But maybe I’m being naïve. It’s just too hard to believe that someone would actually let employees do that.”
After a year behind bars Debbie Blair got out of jail and spent 18 months on probation. It took months to track her down for this report. Finally reached by phone—with her husband, who has a long criminal record—yelling in the background for her to “get the f**k” off the phone—Blair insisted she committed the crimes to feed her family, buy gas and pay the rent on their apartment. She said she wanted to tell her side of the story but wouldn’t permit me to quote her directly.
Blair was going through a rough spot, she admitted. Her husband was a roofer and fell three stories off the Martha’s Vineyard courthouse. He couldn’t get worker’s comp for four months and the burden of making ends meet fell entirely on her shoulders. She was only making $10 an hour at Home Instead, had to pay for her own gas and grew desperate after they cut her hours. She also claimed she had no idea anyone had complained.
She said her high school ambition was to become a nurse, she loved taking care of people, and she never harmed Guarino or stole anything from his house. It’s wicked hard work, she told me, and the pay is horrible. You can make more money working at Burger King. Four months after her arrest she pleaded guilty in Brockton District Court. She insisted she never hurt anyone. A lot of other caregivers do a lot worse without ever getting caught.
Emad Abdelmessih, the court-appointed criminal defense attorney who first represented Blair, believes it was financial difficulties, drug addiction, the influence of her unscrupulous boyfriend, and the ease with which Blair could take valuables from her elderly clients that made her start stealing.
“Her attitude towards her clients was not to abuse them,” Abdelmessih insists. “She had respect for the people she was caring for. You allow somebody to go into your parents’ house, you better keep an eye on them. It’s an unsupervised, unchecked situation. People get weak and start helping themselves.”
‘Sold a Bill of Goods’
After Blair’s arrest, Julie and Chris Sergio moved their parents into an assisted-living facility. Roland Sergio died on May 2, 2012. Gail Sergio, whose Alzheimer’s has worsened over time, currently lives in a locked Alzheimer’s unit of a nursing home. Julie visits her mom several times a week, and Chris and his son make the two-hour drive from New Hampshire as often as they can.
Both the Guarinos and the Sergios were deeply disturbed by what happened. They were angry with Blair for stealing from them but felt even more betrayed by the franchise. Home Instead “sold us a bill of goods,” Chris Sergio told me, “and then put a criminal in our home.”
Investigative journalist and science writer Jennifer Margulis, PhD, [www.JenniferMargulis.net] developed this report for The Jefferson Journal, a publication of Jefferson Public Radio (Southern Oregon and Northern California) with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America.
This article originally published in the December 5, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
