Employees of Haifa old-age home found guilty of abuse

Four employees of a Haifa nursing home filmed subjecting elderly residents to extreme mistreatment admitted to the charges in a plea deal and were found guilty Thursday in the Haifa Magistrate’s Court.

The defendants — a head nurse and three other workers from the Neot Kipat Hazahav old-age home — were found guilty of a series of abuse charges brought by state prosecutors.

The court found Hussam Abu Ahmad (50), Andrei Keyes (49), Peter Goskob (26) guilty of of aggravated assault and “attacks against the helpless.” Inessa Schneider (59), who was the nurse in charge of the unit, was convicted of breach of duty, neglect and failing to report the incidents.

The four were identified in the video footage documenting the abuse aired by Channel 2 a year ago.

The plea deal did not include any agreement about punishment, and the prosecution intends to push for lengthy jail sentences.

A Channel 2 report showed workers brutally punching residents and violently shaking them in order to force them to go to sleep.

The report also documented appalling hygienic conditions at the Haifa facility, with seniors being forced to sleep on urine-stained mattresses and going days on end without being washed.

The footage was provided to the television station by a Neot Kipat Hazahav worker, who documented the abuse over a period of several months in order to expose what he described as “things I never imagined even in my nightmares.”

After the report aired, police raided the nursing home, making several arrests, and interrogated dozens of Neot Kipat Hazahav employees. The Health Ministry then summoned senior staff for a hearing and ordered that the facility’s director be replaced with a medical administrator.

Health Minister Yaakov Litzman expressed outrage at the documented abuse, and vowed a thorough review of Israel’s nursing homes that would include firing workers and management officials.

He personally led a team of ministry officials to Neot Kipat Hazahav, where they demanded to inspect the facility and appraise work methods and practices.

“I am shaken by what happened here,” Litzman told Channel 2 television in an interview from the Haifa home. “It is inhuman; I don’t even have the words. We can’t ignore this.

“This is a loss of all humanity and terrible harm to helpless people. We have to act immediately to prevent these things,” he said.

Neot Kipat Hazahav had received a high score in a nursing review by the ministry a year ago. Litzman accepted that his ministry’s oversight of the country’s old-age homes has been deficient.

“We need to be grateful for the report. It is clear that the Health Ministry is part of the problem,” he said.

In the wake of the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “outraged” by the documented abuse, and called on the Health Ministry and police to “deal with the abusers to the fullest extent of the law and to ensure that these events do not recur.”

In July of 2017, the Ministry of Labor, Welfare and Social Services said that reports of neglect and abuse of the elderly by family and caregivers went up by 17 percent in 2016, including a 20% rise in reports of sexual abuse.