The Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro closed an elderly home in the neighborhood of Guaratiba, west of the city, and arrested, this Sunday (7), a man and a woman responsible for the address. The couple is being charged with crimes of torture, false imprisonment and ill-treatment. The identities of those arrested were not revealed.
Agents from the Campo Grande police station went to the scene to check a complaint from trainee nursing technicians, who had started the first shift at the elderly home on Sunday.
Upon verifying the subhuman conditions in which the elderly lived, intern Daniele Mota, 44, decided to leave the shift and went to the police station to report the abuse and abandonment.
In a statement, the Civil Police reported that “there were 29 elderly people in the asylum. Witnesses reported that the victims were in precarious and unsanitary conditions, without medical care, hospital and hygiene supplies, receiving precarious food and suffering aggressions. Instead, the police found the facts.”
According to police officers, one of the elderly was diagnosed with pressure ulcers, one of them in a state of necrosis, with malnutrition and acute dehydration, in addition to a visible generalized infection. He was referred to the public health network.
In testimony, the wife of one of the victims stated that she had been prevented from seeing her husband in the nursing home for more than a year.
Attendance
A team from the Municipal Department of Social Assistance was today (8) at the nursing home to check the situation of the 29 elderly people and try to locate their relatives.
Of this total, three of them needed medical care and were sent to Rocha Faria Hospital. Twenty families have already been located and taken their relatives home, and six people have already been referred to the secretariat’s elderly shelter because it was not possible to identify the relatives.
Two elderly people were referred to city hall shelters in the city centre, one to Albergue Haroldo Costa and three to Albergue Carlos Portela.
In a note, the Municipal Health Department of Rio reported that residents of the Casa de Reposo de Guaratiba were evaluated on site by health teams of Primary Care.
Three of them, in need of assistance in a hospital unit, were transferred: one, by the Mobile Emergency Care Service, to the Emergency Care Unit of Campo Grande, and the other two, an 81-year-old woman and another 92, were referred to the Rocha Faria Municipal Hospital, where they continue with stable conditions and receiving indicated care.
On the website of the Court of Justice of Rio there is a case in the criminal area against the retirement home in Guaratiba and another five in the civil area.