I-Team: Families sue Chelsea Veterans Home after deadly 2020 COVID outbreak
CHELSEA - The families of veterans who died at the Chelsea Veterans Home during the pandemic are demanding answers in a class action lawsuit. One family told WBZ-TV's I-Team their father's death was preventable.
John Griffin remembers the man who raised him as a loving, gentle father. Anthony Griffin was also a Korean War veteran who valiantly served his country. In April of 2020, he was living in what is now called the Veterans' Home in Chelsea, when a COVID outbreak hit. He died within days. John told the I-Team he does not believe the people running the home knew what they were doing, claiming they had all of the veterans with COVID in one ward with just a curtain between them.
In all, there were 31 coronavirus deaths at the home.
Eric Sheehan was the Assistant Secretary of Veterans Services at the time. The Marine veteran and the woman who oversaw the nursing staff, Beth Scheffler, talked to the I-Team last summer. They said they were fired after repeatedly sounding the alarm about the lack of infection control and questioned how the home was being run. They have both filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the state.
Sheehan said there is always a suspicion in these cases that whistleblowers are rogue employees. But he told WBZ both he and Beth had decades of exemplary public service and wrote the health care regulations for long term care facilities. He told the I-Team, "I think the Baker administration failed veterans."
A state Inspector General's report released in January, blasted then-Governor Charlie Baker's administration, claiming it knew about the problems in the Chelsea home and did nothing to protect the residents.
Inspectors found in 2022 that rooms were in terrible condition, with feces, dead rodents, dirt and bugs, and that the conditions pointed to a "catastrophic failure of the home's leadership."
Another report said veterans at the home had been found lying "soaked in urine and sitting in feces."
The leadership team included the then-superintendent of the facility, Eric Johnson. After the IG's report was released, the I-Team caught up with Johnson but he refused to talk about the allegations. Days after our investigation aired, Governor Maura Healey fired Johnson.
Since then, families of veterans who died of COVID in Chelsea filed a class action lawsuit, claiming former and current state officials failed to safeguard the residents in their care.
In a statement to the I-Team, Anthony Antonellis, the attorney representing the families, said:
"Our clients are American heroes. We are hoping to get answers for them and closure for the families involved in this devastating experience. Senators Warren and Markey asked for an independent state investigation into the Chelsea Soldiers Home Covid outbreak, but that investigation into the deaths of these Veterans was either never done or was not made public. Our veterans and their families deserve better. They deserve answers. We want to know why the Soldiers Home did not follow clearly established infectious disease protocols and why the Home was unsanitary and unfit to live in. The inspector general wrote earlier this year that veterans were found lying soaked in urine and sitting in feces and lived in rooms that were in terrible condition, with feces, dead rodents, dirt and bugs present. The inspector general report demonstrates a catastrophic failure of the Home's leadership. We want answers to why the veterans were deprived of basic Constitutional rights. We hope this lawsuit prevents this improper treatment of our country's veterans from ever happening again."
John Griffin said his father and the other men who served their country deserved better.
"I feel as if they did not do enough. This shouldn't have happened. You're in a soldier's home, you should be taken care of that's your top priority," he told WBZ.
In 2022, the Baker administration agreed to pay more than $56 million to settle a lawsuit with the families of the veterans who died in the Holyoke Soldiers Home.
The I-Team contacted the Executive Office of Veterans' Services for a comment on the Chelsea lawsuit and this statement was sent:
"Secretary Santiago has prioritized making changes at both Massachusetts Veterans Homes to ensure that residents receive the quality services they have earned and fought for. We are committed to laying a solid foundation for a brighter future, moving beyond the challenges of the past, and creating a better tomorrow for our heroes."