This Saturday, W5 uncovers horrific stories of parents and grandparents entrusted to long-term care facilities who are suffering unprecedented abuse and assaults. In a landmark investigation, W5 finds alarming rates of resident-on-resident elder abuse in Canada’s private and government-run long term care facilities. In W5’s “CRISIS IN CARE” airing thisSaturday, Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. ET on CTV, Sandie Rinaldo leads the investigation into cases of serious assaults in Toronto and Burnaby, B.C. With troubling findings, Rinaldo discovers a lack of accountability by management, government, and even police for victims amid claims of systemic failure to find justice for seniors whose golden years have been turned black and blue.Rinaldo meets families of seniors who suffered abuse at the hands of fellow residents while in the care of nursing homes, leaving families seeking accountability from those responsible for the failure to properly care for their loved ones. In one case, W5 finds that Toronto police will not exercise criminal jurisdiction over nursing homes after a violent assault, insisting that investigation of a failure by homes to protect residents is the responsibility of the Ontario Ministry of Health. But, even in cases where the Ministry finds fault with facilities, there are limited repercussions. The full-edition report reveals that there is no apparent justice for frail and helpless victims, brought to these facilities for the very purpose of keeping them safe.
“These are our loved ones who we entrust into care and when the system fails them there is no accountability,” said Rinaldo.
“In an aging population many of us will find ourselves in care and we surely hope and believe that we will be safe in our elder years,” said Anton Koschany, Executive Producer, W5.
W5 sets out to unearth the depth of this issue and, finding no statistics on the problem, undertakes an extraordinary national investigation of incident reports province-by-province and jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction, revealing the first national picture of an alarming problem and a troubling rate of documented resident-on-resident assaults in Canada. Seeking possible reasons for uncontrolled violence in seniors’ homes, W5 uses hidden camera video to reveal misrepresentations of support worker-to-resident ratios who could help prevent some of the violent interactions.
W5 also airs Sundays at 5 p.m. ET on CTV, and Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on CTV Two. W5 can also be seen on Investigation Discovery on Tuesdays at 11 p.m. ET, and Wednesdays at 3 a.m. ET, 6 a.m. ET and 12 noon ET; and on demand atCTVNews.ca/W5, the CTV Mobile channel on Bell Mobile TV, and through video on demand partners, such as Bell Fibe TV (visit CTV.ca for local listings).
