Families reveal pain of losing loved ones at St Basil’s aged care
Families of St Basil’s Covid victims say their biggest regret in their loved ones’ final days was not “breaking down the doors” to save them.
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“I just wanted to say sorry to my beautiful mum and dad.”
Steven Trimbos broke down in tears before he even took the podium at the St Basil’s coronial inquest, where he read a letter of sorrow and love to his late parents Ilias and Hrisoula.
“I was all right until I heard everyone else,” Mr Trimbos said through tears about statements read before him by loved ones of the 50 souls lost at the Fawkner aged care home.
After weeks of lawyers quizzing government officials and bureaucrats about Australia’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak during the second wave of 2020, Thursday was the families’ turn to be heard.
State Coroner Judge John Cain stepped down from his bench to sit among the children and grandchildren of the dead as they read their statements on the final day of the inquest.
He also asked them to call him John.
Mr Trimbos lost his whole family — both his parents and his only brother Peter — within two months of 2020.
He only learned through the inquest of the horrible suffering of both his parents in their final days.
Of how his mother was transferred to hospital as one of St Basil’s sickest patients despite being told she was asymptomatic.
And of how his father was found on the floor of the Fawkner home by one of the replacement workers after all staff were stood down as close contacts in July 2020.
“I just keep thinking now what would have been going through their minds at these times — ‘Where are my sons?’, ‘Why haven’t they tried to come and see me?’, ‘Why have they left me here to die and what did I do to them to deserve this’?”
Mr Trimbos was sorry — for allowing them to go into St Basil’s, for not getting them out when Covid-19 hit, for the failures of those looking after them, for not being able to bring them home, and for being unable to hold or touch or kiss them as they struggled to take their last breaths.
“I should have broken the doors down, but they kept telling me you were OK and safe but obviously you weren’t,” he said.
“I tried everything I could, I’m so sorry mum and dad.”
Families spoke with one voice of their trauma at knowing their loved ones suffered neglect in their final days and were left to die alone.
Many spoke of the horror that their parents were buried without dignity, in hospital gowns and body bags and even Perspex covering amid fears their bodies would still be infected with the virus.
Archondia Savva’s daughter Androula said her mum was buried in a while coffin because she was scared in the dark.
“The coffin may have been white yet she was still in total darkness in the body bag,” she said.
“We couldn’t even bury her with her dignity and wishes of her white coffin and the outfit she always told us to bury her in when her time comes.”
Rania Rischitelli, who lost her loved one Chryssi Manolas, said her family was “even more traumatised through this coronial inquest to learn of so many mistakes and shortcomings of many individuals and organisations that knew better”.
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Judge Cain thanked the families and told them, “your loved ones would be very proud of you to have the courage to come here and share their stories with us”.
Lawyer Shifa Shaikh, who represents 61 families, said her firm Carbone Lawyers – leading a St Basil’s class action – was aware many were plagued by guilt and remorse for choosing the Fawkner home for their loved ones.
“I want to request you to stop blaming yourself for your choice of St Basil’s,” she said, adding they had no idea they’d end up in the coroner’s court when they made that decision.
“It is not your fault. It is not your fault. It is not your fault.”
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