You can check on your pet and your home through your phone, and we all are watched every day on the streets, but there's a group that remains unseen. In 2012, fearing the worst, the family of 96-year-old nursing home resident Erytha Mayberry put a camera in her room.
"We didn't like what we saw, of course," said Doris Racher, victim's daughter.
What they caught on tape in Oklahoma changed state law there: an aide stuffing latex gloves into Mayberry's mouth and pressing on her chest. She died soon after. The nursing home aide is serving a year in jail. The video outraged the public, prompting Oklahoma to permit voluntary room surveillance cameras in long term care facilities. Only three other states have similar laws.
In west surburban Elmhurst, Rosemary Pulice wishes Illinois allowed cameras.
"I can only think about the information they could have given me about my father," said Pulice.
Pulice became a video advocate in 1991 while her father Frank, a WWII vet, deteriorated in a nursing home.
"I saw marks on his body, he had bruises, he constantly had fevers. My father's thumb was three times the actual size and was black," said Pulice.
As a member of Illinois non-profit "Nursing Home Monitors," Pulice calls on politicians to increase patients' rights. In 2003, former State Rep. Frank Aguilar says his bill died in committee from outside resistance.
"Most of it was associations, lobbyists and representatives of the nursing homes," said Aguilar.
The Healthcare Council of Illinois represents 500 nursing homes in the state and is working to pass a patient's right's bill, but cameras are not part of it.
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I-Team: Illinois nursing homes unseen by cameras
It's sad that we live in a an age where we have to protect our vulnerable by hiding cameras. But, it's necessary that we do.
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