The son of an elderly woman abused at South Australia’s notorious Oakden nursing home hopes the royal commission will recommend installing surveillance cameras to catch out misconduct.
Whistleblower Stewart Johnston’s late mother, Helen, spent three weeks as an outpatient at the now closed scandal-plagued facility back in 2008. He said she was traumatised from the experience until her death in 2014.
Johnston’s family is making a written submission to the royal commission into the aged care sector ahead of the first hearing in Adelaide this Friday. He hopes the commission will recommend criminal prosecutions against abuse perpetrators at Oakden and those who covered up the scandal, which has been dubbed “a shameful chapter in South Australia’s history.”
Helen was able to tell her son about the mistreatment at Oakden but Johnston is conscious people with dementia may not be able to report abuse to their families.
At 2am, a carer took Helen to the bathroom because she could not walk and was in a wheelchair, Johnston said.
“He threw her on to the toilet,” Johnston said. “When she was finished, she rang the bell for probably close to an hour and then he eventually came back.
“He swung open the door, marched straight up to her, grabbed her by the face and slapped her across the cheek and said ‘don’t you think you’re important because you’re no more important than anyone else’. He turned around, turned the light off and left her.”
Johnston said his mother was in chronic pain from arthritis and fibromyalgia and would “scream with pain if you touched her pinky”.
“Eventually he came back and he threw her into the wheelchair, ran over her foot with the wheel of the wheelchair – went at breakneck speed back into her room, picked her up and threw her into the bed, then slammed the door and walked away.”
Johnston supports the installation of externally monitored surveillance cameras, which would not necessarily record all day but would be triggered by certain scenarios such as raised voices or swear words.
“No one objects to surveillance at a Westfield [shopping centre],” he said. “It would catch the good doing good, and the bad doing bad.”
He dismissed arguments from privacy campaigners, saying that people should consider the vulnerability of the elderly.
“People are objecting to a camera being there to look after an 89-year-old who can’t speak, who is being thumped in the middle of the night,” Johnston said.
More than 10 years on from Helen’s time at Oakden, Johnston said his family’s lives had changed for ever.
“I gave up my career in the end to care for Mum and Dad because there was no way I was going to allow anyone else to do it,” Johnston said.
The royal commission is accepting public submissions, which can be made anonymously. It will hold hearings in February and March in Adelaide before travelling to Australian cities and regional hubs.
The commission’s final report deadline is 30 April 2020.
