COMPLAINT ABOUT ELDER ABUSE AND MISCONDUCT BY THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC ADVOCATE - South Australia
Contribution from Matilda Bawden, Specialist Support Co-Ordinator/ Forensic Social Worker
The Hon Kyam Maher
Attorney General
Via Email: AttorneyGeneral@sa.gov.au
Monday 18th March 2024
Dear Attorney General,
RE: COMPLAINT ABOUT ELDER ABUSE AND MISCONDUCT
BY THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC ADVOCATE
I am a Forensic Social Worker and human rights advocate with 30 years' experience in disabilities, child protection, aged rights, homelessness, poverty and squalor.
I am writing on behalf of Mr. Ammun Luca, to complain vigorously about systemic elder abuse and the misconduct demonstrated by the Office of Public Advocate (OPA) with oversight of Public Advocate, Angelica Noone, over some 6 months, during which time a vulnerable and now deemed “protected person”, Dr K.M., has been held hostage by the State of South Australia – removed from any contact with her family, friends, and rich community of carers, treating doctors, nurses, social workers and significant others in her life – whilst simultaneously being institutionalised against her knowledge, consent or expressed wishes.
This is not the first time I have written about specific cases of elder abuse by the State of South Australia, but it appears it is becoming ever-more prolific and common-place within the Attorney General’s and SA Health portfolios. Indeed, my own mother narrowly escaped a similar fate to Dr K.M. last November, 2023, when she was deemed by the Lyell McEwin Hospital to be cognitively impaired because she “doesn’t speak English”!
We also wish to complain vigorously about what is, prima facie, an archetypical example of gross abuse of power and process against Dr K.M.'s interests by The Office of Public Advocate and South Australian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (SACAT), on behalf of The Office of Attorney General. In fact, this case represents a text-book example of systemic elder abuse & bad case-management practices by the OPA; which has ignored all the fundamental principles of “least restrictive practices”, “guardian of last resort” and “capacity must be assumed”, before launching into the totalitarian takeover of a vulnerable person’s life as a result of a family dispute. Put simply, this is a case in which a scorned daughter; aggrieved at being left out of any control over her parents’ financial or other affairs, sought vengeance against her brother.
I am aware that in mid-2023 there was a matter against the OPA & Crown of South Australia heard before the Full Supreme Court which resulted in a 3-0 decision in favour of a mother who was wrongfully separated from her severely intellectually disabled son for NO REASON WHATSOEVER GIVEN TO THE MOTHER OR RAISED IN THE SUPREME COURT!
In complete breach of every right and protection owed to her by the State, throughout her incarceration, Dr K.M. has been:
· Denied access to her own GP's of her own choice,
· Isolated from her community of carers and friends,
· Denied any knowledge or information about these proceedings affecting her directly
· Denied the opportunity to speak for herself or participate in the proceedings,
· Presumed to have no capacity to make every day decisions for herself for the entire duration of "guardianship",
· Denied contact with her son (even for Christmas!),
· Hospitalised for extended periods,
· Placed on a medication regime that was not of her choosing & which was originally intended to negate the negative impacts of certain prescription medications on her cognitive abilities,
· Denied the medications which had aided her cognitive recovery and well-being,
· Been forced to live outside her home,
· Forced to undergo medical evaluation against her wishes,
· Subjected to elder abuse and denied her basic human rights (including having her EPOA and ACD's ignored).
All of this was permitted to happen for over 6 agonising months during which Mr Luca’s mother was denied proper medical care or any opportunity for cognitive recovery, WITH NO EVIDENCE TO SHOW THAT DR K.M.'s TREATING PRACTITIONERS OR HER SON HAD IN ANY WAY ABUSED OR NEGLECTED HIS MOTHER'S CARE.
Today, Mr Luca finally had malicious and fraudulent charges of alleged assault against his father dropped by police, however, he has not seen his mother in 6 months whilst the charges were left pending. Nevertheless, irreparable damage was done to Mr Luca’s mother during those 6 months, which denied her security, stability and continuity of medical and personal care.
The situation leading up to the charges by police was contrived by Mr Luca’s sister, Alexandra Eckert (a nurse by profession, who herself was sacked TWICE for the misconduct of breaching COVID mandates in Victoria) in order to have their parents locked away in a nursing home in order to sell the family home for her own selfish benefits and ends.
Meanwhile, evidence shows that the OPA has acted with complete bias and intent to obstruct Dr K.M. having her wishes honoured – alienating and isolating Dr K.M. and denying even her GP's any opportunity to check upon her welfare or consult with her newly appointed practitioner/s.
SACAT's own website claims:
What does SACAT consider when making a guardianship order?
SACAT will weigh up evidence to decide if there is a need for an order and will consider:
o what the person’s wishes would have been had they not become mentally incapacitated
o what the person’s present wishes are - if these can be expressed
o whether existing arrangements are adequate and should not be disturbed
o what is the least restrictive of the person’s rights and personal autonomy, that also ensures that the person is properly cared for and protected.
It is clear that SACAT has ignored Dr K.M.'s wide community of carers, supporters and advocates (instead they have been ostracized, threatened and denied access to Dr K.M.!) and has failed to make a determination in a timely manner so as not to disadvantage or damage, but preserve, Dr K.M.'s capacity to enjoy living independently in her own home, surrounded by her family and community.
The Respondent has never sought to cut the Applicant out of the lives of their parents yet, in stark contrast, the Applicant has shown a propensity to act with malice towards her brother and his network of helpers (even lodging proven false and malicious complaints against myself).
Now Dr K.M. faces having her home sold - not by her son, who is falsely accused by the Applicant of financially abusing her - but by the Applicant herself and/or the Public Trustee!
By stark contrast, Mr Luca had kept his mother in good health for most of a year, living independently in her own home, with good personal care supports & able to enjoy the lifestyle clearly described by her in her ACD; until her medical regime was switched and withheld by the Applicant. Dr K.M. was never even hospitalised for any cold or flu whilst in the care of her son, yet within a few short weeks she landed in hospitals for several weeks!
How was the OPA acting in Dr K.M.’s best interests when it:
1) Opportunistically and with no cause of action, intervened in a family dispute, with no evidence of wrongdoing by any party holding valid and lawful Enduring Power of Attorney (EPOA) and Advanced Care Directive (ACD)?
2) Failed to inform Dr K.M. immediately after application to SACAT, that she was the subject of any proceedings for guardianship. In so doing, the OPA showed partiality from the vary outset and increasingly followed the imperatives of the Eckerts, even though technically, the Applicant had no powers at all?
3) Failed to protect the alleged “protected person” from the insult, injury and harm to which she was subsequently subjected, as she was stripped of any rights or continuity of care. Despite 14 years of emails available to the OPA to demonstrate Dr K.M.’s wishes, these were all ignored.
4) Blocked and obstructed at every opportunity for Dr K.M. to be visited upon by her family, friends and community of supporters and carers, by threats and suggestion that the OPA could retaliate against anyone who might seek to have contact with Dr Dr K.M.?
5) Imposed terms and conditions on contact with Dr K.M. that even the Police had not done and without appropriate court orders?
6) Conducted a capacity assessment against Dr K.M.’s wishes and against the wishes of her EPOA’s, whilst Dr K.M. was medicated, isolated and removed from her familiar surrounds?
7) Failed to prevent the Applicant from evicting Dr K.M. from her property once her husband became infirmed?
8) Failed to ensure Dr K.M. was suitably housed and cared for at home according to her wishes?
9) Failed to safeguard Dr K.M.’s assets and hoe from being destroyed, given away or sold off without due care or process?
All this was despite the SACAT finding that Dr K.M. was under the lawful and valid protection of Enduring Power of Attorney (EPOA) and Advanced Care Directive (ACD) documents (signed on the same day) which empowered Mr. Luca to make decisions on Dr K.M.’s behalf. Nevertheless, Dr K.M. was never deemed to have a legal incapacity between April 2023 and February 2024.
In Mr. Luca’s own words, the events unfolded as follows:
THE ENTRY IN OCTOBER 2023
1) The Eckert’s entered my parents’ family home on 14th October 2023, where my partner, Lisa Grieg, and I have been carers for my mother. However, Lisa was not present on that particular morning. Lisa normally spends two to three days in my parents’ house, each week and more recently as a carer for my mother.
2) Soon after entering my parents’ home (purportedly in a “surprise” visit) the Eckerts used violent, degrading and unlawful tactics to forcibly remove myself from my parents’ home in an effort to “set me up” in order to “clear the way” so that Ms Eckert could have a “bid” at guardianship (through an application to SACAT) over my mother, Dr K.M..
3) Since setting out to have my mother placed under guardianship, Ms Eckert has attempted to use tests for “capacity” performed on my mother when sick, medicated and hospitalised (in late 2022 and recently Feb 2024) as a basis for an attempt to challenge the “validity” of some Enduring Power of Attorney (EPOA) and Advanced Care Directives (ACD) documents which my mother signed on 17 May 2023.
4) Believing she could utilise SACAT to invalidate these documents, WHICH THEY HAVE NOT DONE, she used improper and unlawful tactics to gain control of my mother and also father in the expectation that she would gain guardianship over my mother last November.
5) These unlawful actions included:
· Denying paid carers access to my mother in the following week,
· Removing my mother’s prescribed medications and
· Excluding my partner, Lisa, from her role in a self-managed aged care plan which Lisa was managing with my father Michael and in which she was a signed ‘go to’ person. Ms Eckert also introduced a new GP, Dr Walsh, just two weeks prior to a SACAT hearing on the 6th November 2023 for the express purpose of usurping my mother’s current GPs, Dr Antonia Turnbull and Dr Maureen Busuttil.
6) Further, an Interim Intervention Order (IIO) was placed on me the SAME DAY that the Eckerts arrived in October 2023, after Ms Eckert falsely alleged an “assault” by me against my father; which I have vigorously denied. With this false accusation, Ms Eckert has been able to leverage the IIO as a tool to isolate me from BOTH my mother and my father and preventing me from attending the family home, whilst freeing up the Eckerts to have full and unfettered access to my parents’ home, goods, documents and other assets. In the meantime, with an IIO pending over my head at the SACAT hearing on Friday 1st March, 2024, the SACAT was all too eager to fast track my mother towards full and permanent guardianship of the State by issuing orders on 8th March, 2024, despite purportedly giving me a week in which to respond to any additional information I needed to present.
7) Unbeknownst to me or anyone in my network, Ms Eckert had lodged an application with SACAT on the 20th September 2023 and made false and misleading statements to SACAT in her application about my mother’s medications. Importantly, Ms Eckert declared in her application that “Dr K M’s son has moved into her house and she is at acute risk of her medical and financial affairs being handled inappropriately”.
8) Two days prior to lodging the SACAT application, on 18th September 2023, Ms Eckert wrote an email to her father, Michael, the following: “Actually dad I know exactly what is happening ! And you have caused me grief I’m not stupid You will not listen to me you have put Lisa over your own daughter as POE {EPOA?}!! That’s wrong and mum if she was fully understanding would think so too Missy (sic)”.
9) It is clear from this email that Ms Eckert, once alerted to the fact that she was not included on the EPOA and that she had been replaced by Lisa as her father’s EPOA, had to retrospectively create a narrative which she could convincingly sell to the SACAT. At about the same time, Ms Eckert called Dr Marco Gleeson (my father’s GP) to suggest that my father should be tested for mental capacity. This was reported to myself, my partner Lisa and Yvette Piller, by my father.
10) In a sworn Affidavit dated 18th October 2023, my sister, Alexandra Eckert, made a false claim that, on the morning of the 14th October 2023, very soon after 9.15am, she had called the police whilst still at the house because of a “heightened situation”. In the Affidavit, Ms. Eckert falsely claims that she had told me that she had called the police and that, as a result of that declaration, I had fled the house.
11) However, at no stage that morning did she inform me that she had called the police. I had, in fact, left the house of my own volition to seek a witness and I left the house at around 9.30am.
12) Freedom of Information records have since disclosed that the first phone call my sister had made that morning was at 11.03am to a police station. Accordingly, Ms. Eckert has perjured herself.
13) If subpoenaed (something the Police failed to do!), further evidence would show that I had made a phone call to my partner, Lisa Greig, from a public phone booth to her workplace sometime between 9.30am and 10am.
14) Ms. Eckert’s perjured statement suggests a sense of great urgency and importance in apparently calling police before 9.30am yet, in truth, no incident of any importance had happened at the house of such great urgency as to corroborate her unsubstantiated claims of assault by me against my father.
15) I say that what, in truth, happened at the house was that I was violently, verbally and physical intimidated by Ms. Eckert and her husband, Chris. This is why I left, peacefully, of my own free will.
16) I also say that the perjured statement by Ms Eckert was constructed to, retrospectively, explain why she needed police intervention.
Now, in a highly questionable turn of events, despite Police dropping assault charges against me, I am advised that SACAT seeks to continue to have influence on the Interim Intervention Orders that were instigated when I was originally charged, even though they should have been discharged completely and simultaneously when the assault charged were dropped completely.
The Intervention Orders (Prevention of Abuse) Act 2009, spells out clearly the conditions which would reasonably alert authorities to a situation of abuse of an elderly or vulnerable person:
Part 3—Intervention and associated orders
Division 1—General
6—Grounds for issuing intervention order
There are grounds for issuing an intervention order against a person (the defendant) if—
(a) it is reasonable to suspect that the defendant will, without intervention, commit an act of abuse against a person; and
(b) the issuing of the order is appropriate in the circumstances.
Yet, without so much as a hint of any abuse or neglect (but rather the complete opposite), Mr. Luca has been deprived of contact with his mother and his mother has been deprived of her human rights and liberties directly at the hands of the OPA.
8—Meaning of abuse—domestic and non-domestic
(1) Abuse may take many forms including physical, sexual, emotional, psychological or economic abuse.
(2) An act is an act of abuse against a person if it results in or is intended to result in—
(a) physical injury; or
(b) emotional or psychological harm; or
(c) an unreasonable and non-consensual denial of financial, social or personal autonomy; or
(d) damage to property in the ownership or possession of the person or used or otherwise enjoyed by the person.
(3) Emotional or psychological harm includes—
(a) mental illness; and
(b) nervous shock; and
(c) distress, anxiety, or fear, that is more than trivial.
(4) Emotional or psychological harm—examples
Without limiting subsection (2)(b), an act of abuse against a person resulting in emotional or psychological harm may be comprised of any of the following:
(a) sexually assaulting the person or engaging in behaviour designed to coerce the person to engage in sexual activity;
(b) unlawfully depriving the person of his or her liberty;
(c) driving a vehicle in a reckless or dangerous manner while the person is a passenger in the vehicle;
(d) causing the death of, or injury to, an animal;
(e) following the person;(f) loitering outside the place of residence of the person or some other place frequented by the person;
(g) entering or interfering with property in the possession of the person;
(h) giving or sending offensive material to the person, or leaving offensive material where it will be found by, given to or brought to the attention of the person;
(i) publishing or transmitting offensive material by means of the Internet or some other form of electronic communication in such a way that the offensive material will be found by, or brought to the attention of, the person;
(j) communicating with the person, or to others about the person, by way of mail, telephone (including associated technology), fax or the Internet or some other form of electronic communication in a manner that could reasonably be expected to cause emotional or psychological harm to the person;
(k) keeping the person under surveillance;
(l) directing racial or other derogatory taunts at the person;
(m) threatening to withhold the person's medication or prevent the person accessing necessary medical equipment or treatment;
(n) threatening to institutionalise the person;
(o) threatening to withdraw care on which the person is dependent;
(oa) forcing the person to marry another person;
(ob) preventing the person from entering the person's place of residence; (oc) taking an invasive image (within the meaning of Part 5A of the Summary Offences Act 1953) of the person and threatening to distribute the image without the person's consent;
(od) coercing a person to terminate a pregnancy;
(oe) coercing a person to not terminate a pregnancy;
(p) otherwise threatening to cause the person physical injury, emotional or psychological harm or an unreasonable and non-consensual denial of financial, social or domestic autonomy or to cause damage to property in the ownership or possession of the person or used or otherwise enjoyed by the person.
CONCLUSION:
It is clear that the State has failed at every turn to properly care for and protect Dr K.M.’s interests and I request that Mr Luca be immediately reappointed and recognised as Dr K.M.’s primary carer so that she can be cared for in her own home to enjoy the limited time she may have.
Mr. Luca remains Dr K.M.’s best legal guardian and with any assault charges now dropped by SA Police, there is no reason for the charade to continue that Dr K.M. needs to be protected from her loving son via any further State interventions; including the rescinding of any lawful EPOA and ACD powers belonging to Mr. Luca by SACAT Orders.
Yours sincerely
Matilda Bawden
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Matilda Bawden (B.A.;B.Soc. Admin.)
Social Worker/Specialist Support Co-Ordinator
Founding Member of Community Linkages, Inclusion & Innovation Centre (CLIIC)
ABN: 71 505 060 826
Mob: 0412 836 685