a caregiving nightmare

[elarson]

I'm hoping you all do not mind that I am posting this here. It is a petition to the police in Holland to get them to take action after a caregiver gave my husband an overdose of medication and stole money from him, and also about the poisoning of our dogs.

It is one of those stories that you hope you never experience, but I think one that is good for others to know about. Despite my efforts to deal with the caregiver, he had my husband in his grips, and with his cognitive issues, I think his judgement was impaired.

I guess the moral of the story is to always trust your gut instinct if there is a caregiver that you feel may not be trustworthy. As we found out, it's just not worth all the havoc they can wreak in your life if they are not. We had detailed contracts, care instructions, etc., and still this guy managed to get away with it.

It's not helped by having abysmally apathetic police and prosecution services in the Netherlands, who just don't seem to be taking this seriously. In my view, something like this done to someone who is not able to defend themselves should be dealt with doubly as strong. Sadly that is not the case here.

Don't feel you need to the sign the petition, but of course you are welcome to. You are also welcome to share it with others who you think may be interested. I'll warn you, it's a very long story, and hence why I am not posting it all here also.

Here is the link: https://www.change.org/p/the-dutch-p...ms-of-3-crimes



P.S. If I've broken any rules by posting this, the moderators can feel free to remove it.

[SCI-Nurse]

So sorry. Just curious...was this person hired through an agency, or how did you recruit them? And did you have a background check done prior to hiring? Petition signed!

(KLD)

[elarson]

Thanks for signing KLD. Please share it with as many people as you think might be interested.

We hire care directly, which is our preference after many bad experiences with agencies. For all caregivers we have a declaration of good behaviour. This guy kept evading me on it, because he did not have a fixed address, which makes it impossible to get the declaration here. He had been living at our neighbours house temporarily, which is how we were introduced to him, and I had also asked around to others who knew him and nobody said anything bad.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do a background check here. They are only just now talking about having a register where offenders are entered. It's one of the reason we need this guy prosecuted so that I can get him on the offenders list so he can not do this again. Shockingly, he even had a daughter, who had heavy disabilities. He was a big talker about all that he did for her, and it was only after this happened and I contacted others who knew him from the past that I found out he was full of shit, and had basically abandoned her and her mother.

It was difficult, because he was a sort of friend of a friend. This man had previously stayed at our house, and also when I went on a business trip and a family visit. It was after the family visit in the summer of 2013 that I did not trust him alone with my husband for care. After that time, that 3 hours when they went to the bank (he had said art workshop) was the only time he was with my husband without me nearby. It was something I was not comfortable with, but unfortunately, I got overriden by my husband.

His primary job was to support my husband in painting. He was fully trained in care by me many times, but I always had other caregivers here to provide ADL care, because I was never comfortable with him for that. We keep a blog and printed information available at all times with care information. In some ways I feel like I may have even given him the idea about this, because we had recently switched to nasal midazolam for seizure rescue medication, and I had sent out an update to all caregivers a couple of days before because I was concerned about him leaving our house with my husband without me.

I really think this guy had been manipulating my husband for a few months, and was also trying to drive a wedge through us as partners. He started making stupid arguments with me and causing enough disruption that I eventually just kept away from him for anything that was not absolutely necessary. Coincidentally, that started at about the same time my husband received his inheritance, which this guy knew about, as a later found out from Facebook chats.

What is amazing about all of this is that this guy has admitted some of this stuff publicly on Facebook, and still the police aren't taking action. I find it shocking!

So sorry. Just curious...was this person hired through an agency, or how did you recruit them? And did you have a background check done prior to hiring? Petition signed!

(KLD)

[josieand1]

Signed. That is awful. I'm sorry.

[2drwhofans]

Signed. The picture of your husband with Jansen brought tears to my eyes.

[QTiPi]

It IS shocking. And sad. And, in its way, not shocking enough--these kinds of stories are getting awfully familiar.

If you were to set up one of those crowd-sourced donation thingies, I for one would be pleased to donate towards your costs for the toxicology tests and any other investigative work you've had done or want to have done. That's about all I can do to help beyond signing the petition.

[~Lin]

God, I'm so sorry. This is horrific. I can't even imagine. RIP Jansen

[Gordy1]

Signed.

[hlh]

It upsets me very much to read about this horrible experience. What a nightmare. I added my signature.

I recently let a caregiver go for inappropriate behavior, but this is shocking.

I am sorry you are dealing with this. Are there any local politicians that you could go to and tell your story? Or a local small newspaper?

[nonoise]

signed

[Sugarcube]

This is just horrible! Can you possibly get a restraining order (or something similar) against this individual? It sounds like you may need it.

[lynnifer]

How far did you go with police? I'd recommend showing up in person with the victim and asking to speak to the Chief or a designate. I'm just wondering why police are not taking this seriously if you have all of this evidence?

What about the media?

[crags]

I had two-year nightmare with the caregiver which finally was ended under very adversarial conditions in which cost me legal fees and much paperwork. This employee seemed to know how to play the termination game and the threat of legal action against the employer, which under most circumstances the employer will throw a couple hundred bucks at the employee just to get them away from them and to and the legal claim, though baseless it was. This was in 2009.

Fast forward to 2015 and the other night I get a phone call from of all people this employee. When she announced she was I promptly said I do not know of such person and hung up the phone. I then put a block on her number. I do not know why she was calling me after six years, but it is truly upsetting that this woman could still possibly be up to no good in trying to harass or conjure up some other nefarious scheme.

Be aware and be careful.

[Domosoyo]

signed

[elarson]

Thanks for your support everyone. Please feel free to share our petition with as many people as possible. I think it is especially important to the disabled community.

I hope you don't mind I answer your questions as a group (very busy trying to promote our petition):

2drwhofans - Yeah, that picture makes me cry too. I had thought it might be a bit too morbid, but I'm glad it had that effect, because that is what I had hoped for with a wider audience.

hlh - local politicians are not really accountable to their constituency here like they are in other countries. I may try a little, but I don't have much hope in that way, and it would probably be a lot of work for nothing. If I can get some traction on the petition and with the media, I think that will be more effective. Sort of name and shame.

Sugarcube - restraining order not possible.

lynnifer - With the police I've gone up the chain of command to the highest level we can which is the province level (many phone calls and e-mails). After I did that, I had hoped to finally get action. Instead, they sent a local agent to tell us they were not going to do anything. About the poisoning of the dogs they said I had to do an online declaration, which is what you would do if someone damaged your property. I did that just so that they couldn't say I was not cooperating, but of course I have had no response to that either.I followed up with another request for action at the highest police level saying we did not accept their lame attempt to act like they were taking action, but have had no answer. With the prosecution service, we have put in a formal complaint to the highest level we can which is the province level. We have acknowledgement of receipt, but no response or action.

crags - I really sorry to hear what you went through. I can really symathize with you. That must have been horrible for them to contact you after all of these years. If it helps any, I think you did the absolute right thing to just hang-up on them. It seems that people like this absolutely know how to play the game. I don't know if it is worth it or not, but it might help if you can somehow at least register a harassment charge with the police. The caregiver who did this in our situation even wrote that they were threatening me to "stop our campaign", and the police did nothing, so I'm not sure if it well, but it is worth a try. Document everything.