Family of Ermanno Serpo tell of mistreatment at Oakden Older Persons Mental Health Facility
ERMANNO Serpo was grabbed by the throat and “dragged” along a corridor while staying at the Oakden Older Persons Mental Health service, his family says.
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ERMANNO Serpo was grabbed by the throat and “dragged” along a corridor before being “thrown” on to a couch while staying at the Oakden Older Persons Mental Health service, his family says.
He was also so over-medicated in his three years at the facility he would eat with his eyes shut, was unable to walk and had five unsupervised falls in the week leading up to his death.
These are the memories his family have relived and shared of Mr Serpo’s time at the facility, on the first anniversary of the 82-year-old’s death.
His daughter, Alma Krecu, said the family wanted to share their experience to ensure this type of mistreatment never happened again to those living with dementia.
“There were instances when I couldn’t find him and he’d be in the courtyard in the middle of winter in a T-shirt and no shoes, walking around,” Mrs Krecu said yesterday.
“More often than not there was human faeces in the courtyard, we would report it to the nurses and they’d say ‘Oh yes, we know it’s been there for a while’. There was urine in the hallways and quite often we’d report it and it would take them a while to clean it.”
Mrs Krecu said that “without a shadow of a doubt” her father was over-medicated as a way to deal with his dementia.
“Two weeks before my father passed away, he was a grey colour and completely unresponsive and all we got told is that ‘he’s just tired, he didn’t sleep last night’,” she said.
“Most Fridays he was very heavily sedated. When we fed him he would eat with his eyes closed, he was unable to sit in a chair, or he’d walk to a corner and just look at the wall.”
His wife, Rina, said she visited her husband every day and witnessed the assault on her husband by an employee, in December 2013.
“I think Ermanno felt threatened by him and he mumbled and showed his fist, so the carer grabbed him by the neck and T-shirt and dragged him along and threw him on the couch,” she said. “I told him my husband is here for a reason, all the other residents are here because they are sick, but I think you’re sicker than them, this is not the place for you.”
Mrs Serpo complained to management, who dismissed the carer, but the police did not lay charges. The State Government on Thursday announced it would close the state-run facility after the release of a scathing report into the mistreatment of its residents.
The report, by chief psychiatrist Aaron Groves, included cases where dementia patients at the federally-funded aged care had been over-medicated, restrained, isolated and inadequately fed.
However, Lorraine Baff, whose husband Jim is at the facility, said the Government knew there were problems at the site well before Mental Health Minister Leesa Vlahos ordered a comprehensive inquiry. Ms Baff said she raised concerns about understaffing and received a letter from Ms Vlahos in 2015 dismissing the concerns.
She raised further allegations of abuse against Jim in late 2015, and finally secured a conviction in October last year. She said she wanted Ms Vlahos and Health Minister Jack Snelling to resign or be sacked.
“I’m a great believer that rot starts at the top,” Ms Baff said. “They have known there were issues back in 2008.
“There is no way that the Government didn’t know, I made enough noise.”