Esther's Law goes into effect in Ohio to stop abuse of nursing home patients - WTVG
TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - Esther’s Law went into effect on March 23rd, 2022. It lets people put video cameras in the rooms of their loved ones in facilities to make sure no elder abuse is happening.
Back in 2011, Steve Piskor had a bad feeling about the Cleveland nursing home his mother, Esther, was staying in.
“I knew something was happening, that something was wrong,” says Piskor. “I was seeing changes in my mother, seeing bruises on her, and that prompted me in put in a hidden camera because I wanted to know what’s going on. When I put the hidden camera in, I really didn’t know how to operate it so it ran for six weeks, and I caught 8 aids abusing her.”
He describes the horrifying abuse she endured.
“One aid was hip-throwing her onto the bed and grabbing her by the head and picking her up, she dropped her in her chair and jabbed her in the face. Another aid was spraying something in her face, I mean we don’t even know, it was some kind of perfume or something, and my mother had an eye irritation for the whole time she was in that nursing home.”
After catching all this on camera, Piskor knew he had to do something, so he created Esther’s Law. This allows family members to put cameras in loved ones’ rooms so they can constantly have an eye on the elderly person in their lives.
Piskor says he would gladly have given up his mother’s privacy if it meant that she wouldn’t have been abused for so long.
“Families are going to have something that I didn’t have,” he says. “We don’t want to put hidden cameras in and catch our loved ones being abused. This camera is going to stop the abuse. If I had had this camera in, it probably would have stopped the abuse, and I wouldn’t have had to watch her getting abused.”
Most of all, he thinks his mother, Esther, would be so proud.
“I’m sure she’s looking down upon it and extremely happy,” says Piskor. “All that she went through is unimaginable because I only caught six weeks of the video and she was in there for 30 months. I know right now she’s saying that this is something she’s happy about too.”
13abc also talked to Genacross Lutheran Services, a local nursing home, about how their staff feels about the law.
“We encourage it,” Ladina Suber, Regional Clinical Director at Genacross, said. “If putting a camera in their room gives the family members peace of mind, at Genacross Luhteran Services we would help them through that process.”
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source: https://www.13abc.com/2022/03/23/esthers-law-goes-into-effect-ohio-stop-abuse-nursing-home-patients/
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