Lawsuit Alleges Nursing Home Staff Took Nude Photos Of Dementia Patient, Posted Them On Social Media
SEVEN FIELDS, Pa. (KDKA) -- A family has filed a lawsuit alleging employees at a senior living facility took nude photos of a patient and posted them to social media.
Attorney Rob Peirce is representing the family in this case. He said the alleged incident happened this past New Year's Eve at the Paramount Senior Living Facility in Seven Fields. He said it took months to investigate and Tuesday morning, a lawsuit was filed.
"If it weren't for an anonymous phone call, no one would have known about this taking place," said Peirce.
Peirce said the image he saw of an 83-year-old woman with dementia is too disturbing to show.
Peirce said a picture or video was taken of the woman nude from the waist down in her shower chair over a bowel movement.
"To make matters worse, these employees put a derogatory term on the photograph and sent it out on Snapchat and Facebook," said Peirce.
That term, Peirce said was "Winter Fail". Peirce said the victim doesn't talk but sensed something wasn't right.
"She knew something was wrong because she began to cover up her genitalia and do what she could to avoid being in front of a camera," said Peirce.
Peirce said preliminarily it appears some certified nurse assistants were involved, but it's unclear how many at this point.
Paramount Senior Living issued a statement saying "We dispute the characterization of its actions in the plaintiff's complaint. As soon as we were made aware of the incident, the employee was immediately suspended and then terminated. We are sickened by the action of this employee and do not tolerate this behavior in our senior living communities."
"The family has asked us to do everything we can to investigate the procedures involved to allow employees to do such a thing," said Peirce.
Paramount went on to say, "we hold extremely high standards of care, boasting some of the highest staffing ratios in the region. All employees go through a background check investigation prior to hire and we have quality assurance processes in place to ensure all employees are adequately trained. We operate two Skilled Nursing Facilities in the Pittsburgh-area that have both achieved the highest, 5-star, ratings by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS)."
Peirce said he has represented individuals that have had legal claims against this facility in the past, but he wouldn't elaborate.
No criminal charges have been filed.