Julia: Part I Cease & Desist: Undue Influence and Abuse of Our Family

Before making your care provider decision, anyone considering entrusting their loved one to even volunteer care by someone they think they know or have seen in a place, like their Church, where they feel "safe", please read our story of misplaced trust and how we’re still picking up the pieces of the havoc wrecked on our lives.

WHY, JULIA?  Why do my daughter and I believe you have financially and emotionally abused my now almost 99 year old mother and our immediate family since about January 2010 (when she was 95 and had shared our home since she was 57 years of age; almost four decades of continuously living together), while my husband was critically and chronically ill in a hospital bed in our home, since his untimely death in January 2011 and that you are still continuing your actions as I write?

Perhaps, if you stopped refusing to meet, as you have since early 2011, to sit down with us, with an impartial person like our Pastor, as we’ve suggested, we’d have answers to that question and the following…..

WHY, JULIA? Why did you, as we believe, knowingly and willfully make a false report to the State of Missouri Elder Abuse Hot line stating I was financially and emotionally abusing my Mom when all the email communications we exchanged from February 2010 through June 2010 showed no concern on your part except to gather more information on Mom and our family?  

Missouri Law protects the reporter and, in my opinion, punishes the wrongfully accused not allowing any information to be released about the report including being told there was a report made or the “accused” is a “person of interest”. This was true in 2010 and appears to still be a part of the Missouri Statute. It's time, State Legislators to correct this injustice.

Writer's Note: 1-26-15. Noticed a few days ago additions to Missouri State Statues requiring "imminent danger" for the Elder to be investigated. Did not find any definitions. Did not find any references to Guidelines, Systems of Procedures for the DHSS or the Adult Protective Worker and the effect of this "change" is 2017.

Missouri Law did not provide specific systems and procedures to follow for the DHSS worker assigned to “investigate” the complaint. There were no policies in place mandating specific protocols ensuring a timely investigation including direct contact with the accused be made to investigate all allegations. To this day, I've never received notification I was accused of anything, by anyone, at anytime yet my world has been shattered, broken apart and financially damaged by actions there is no doubt you were responsible for doing.

Missouri DHSS guidelines for hiring entry level people given the responsibility for making Medicaid decisions don't even require a college degree. These "workers" aren't required to have a degree in Social Work, undergraduate or graduate or to be a LCW. They can have a GED and a few years working with the general public (fast food or retail gets a State job determining the lives of individuals and families?). One year of work at the DHSS and a few internal courses and they can become an Adult Protective Worker.

A month after my Mom entered a Skilled Nursing Center, supposedly at her request for "permanent placement" while we were told it was for "respite", I received a form letter from the Missouri DHSS asking me to appear as a "person of interest" with no mention of for what purpose, about what matter or concerning anyone in particular.

Writer's Note: 1-26-15. I've discovered in recent months that Medicare provides specific lengths of time for "Respite" and that Respite is for the "family' and not for the "Senior". 

DECEIT AND DECEPTION ON THE PART OF THE DHSS. Without investigating, without any interview of me, my daughter or my husband, who was alive at the time and living in the "same environment" and in a much more weakened and "vulnerable state" and also a Senior under Missouri Law, I was told Respite would be good for Mom as we'd asked for additional Adult Day Care time and the APW suggested this as an alternative.

It’s an interesting story how my daughter and I discovered all these facts and more – to be told in another entry.

Whatever happened to Individual Rights, the Right to Know Your Accuser and Innocent Until Proven Guilty? It'll be three years this November I was falsely accused and unjustly sentenced to live without my Mom being a part of our family as she had been for almost forty years.

She's been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia; it's in very advanced stages; it had been going on while you, Julia, kept telling me there was "absolutely nothing" wrong with my Mom mentally even though she was exhibiting classic (as we now know) LBD symptoms of hallucinations, delusions, difficulty with her gait/walking and other symptoms.

Everyone should visit the website of the Lewy Body Dementia Association to understand this Dementia. People with the disease can appear to function quite well; someone, however, working with men and women on a regular basis with Dementia and Alzheimer's as Julia did, would see these "guideposts". A Registered Nurse trained in one of the top Nursing Schools in the US as Julia was and specializing in caring for this group should definitely see the Dementia.

I’ve gone through training since this happened within the State of Missouri on Elder Abuse through becoming elected to a position on a Board of Directors for an organization providing services for Seniors to improve their quality of life. This began the journey of discovering who the real abuser was and continues to be. It's you, Julia.

WHY, JULIA?  Why did you violate the oath you took as a Registered Nurse? I believe it’s referred to as the Florence Nightingale Pledge.

My life was turned upside down. My character and integrity were assaulted.We suffered irreparable financial loss. Yet through working for extending providing a better life for other Seniors, I’ve found a beginning closure and made lemonade out of one of life’s lemons.

WHY, JULIA? Has your only response to my asking why you made the call to the Missouri Elder Abuse Hot line been, “You can’t prove it?”

WHY, JULIA?  Why deny making the call reporting what is looked upon as a crime? Or, if it was a “mistake”, acknowledging the mistake, if indeed it was one?

I know you've been a highly competitive and capable tennis player since college (possibly even before) and that you are very good at evaluating your opponent and playing to their weakness while advancing your game.

Human life is not a game, Julia; Seniors are not to be used like tennis balls.