A Pennsylvania senior living operator is being sued after an employee allegedly photographed and/or shot video of a partially nude resident while she was sitting in a shower chair and then posted an image on social media.
The incident allegedly occurred on New Year’s Eve at Paramount Senior Living at Cranberry, a memory care community in Seven Fields, PA. A company representative said the employee involved was suspended and later fired.
The image was taken without the consent of the 83-year-old resident, who has dementia, and then was shared via Snapchat and Facebook Messenger and commented on by staff members “in a joking manner that further humiliated the victim and mocked her mental and physical state,” according to the woman’s attorney, Robert Peirce.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, also alleges that the resident’s family was not notified of the incident until three days after staff members posted the picture on social media and that the incident was not recorded in the resident’s chart. Further, the lawsuit maintains that Paramount staff members misled investigators by stating that the image showed a bowel movement but not the resident and that the image was not shared publicly.
The woman no longer lives at the community.
“Every family’s worst nightmare became [a] reality when these images were taken and distributed,” Peirce said. “Paramount failed to live up to its promises and failed my client in the highest degree.”
A Paramount representative, however, said the company “disputes the characterization of its actions in plaintiff’s complaint.”
“As soon as we were made aware of the incident, the employee was immediately suspended and then terminated,” Chase Darmstadter, regional director of operations for Paramount Health Resources, the parent company of Paramount Senior Living, said in a statement to McKnight’s Senior Living. “We are sickened by the actions of this employee and do not tolerate this behavior in our senior living communities.”
