JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- When Jacksonville attorney Steve Watrel was
looking for a nursing home for his father, he took into consideration
something he'd never had to before.
"How do we deal with
degrading, humiliating photos by nursing home employees?" Watrel, who
litigates cases against nursing homes, says.
It happened last week
in Ohio. A former nursing home worker was arrested for allegedly
performing lewd acts and exposing herself to a 100-year-old resident
with dementia. A fellow employee caught the whole thing on video and
turned it over to authorities.
"You've got some younger people
thinking this is kind of a funny thing, some of them should never be
working in a nursing home, and you've got frail seniors, so that's a
real big issue right now," Watrel says.
In many of the cases
documented so far, workers who care for elderly take a video of
something inappropriate. Sometimes the videos are recorded at a nursing
home and other times when caretakers are working with elderly who live
alone.
Then, workers are posting the videos to social media sites
like Instagram and Facebook, degrading a vulnerable population even more
as the video gets shared.
"Who would have thought that someone would use social media in this way?" said Linda Levin, Executive Director at ElderSource.
A
database created by watchdog ProPublica shows social media abuse is on
the rise. They've tracked 47 incidents since 2012, not counting the most
recent one in Ohio.
"I think we'll probably see more of that and
our hope at ElderSource is that people who find these things happening,
or hear of it, report them," Levin says.
Reports of abuse, including those that happen online, can be made confidentially in Florida.
Still,
Levin says abuse issues are historically under reported. "It completely
crosses the line, when you're using something that's meant for good,
and use it to hurt people who are vulnerable and don't have the
opportunity to protect themselves," she says.
Watrel says he
believes laws that hold elder care workers accountable need to catch up
with online vulnerability. "I think a specific law should be passed, a
criminal law, to deal with this specific issue."
In the meantime, he says ask facilities and care works about their social media policy in an effort to keep loved ones safe.
Full Article & Source:
Elder abuse on social media sites rising and causing concern
It's a juggling match. Cruel people abuse elders and film it as they're doing it. Would they do it anyway without the thrill of being on facebook? Probably they would because something's broken within them. Families on the other hand film abuses with spy cameras. I don't think anyone would disagree that cameras in nursing facilities is a good idea.
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