A woman with brain injuries was taken to Dunedin Hospital three days after being assaulted inside a Dunedin care facility. A distraught daughter says her mother’s face was “pummeled” by a fellow resident of a Dunedin care facility. “She was meant to be safe,” Emma Shepherd said of her 55-year-old mother. Pictures of her mother show large bruises around her eyes and mouth, with “some bruises still coming out five days after the assault”. On Wednesday, her mother was bashed at a Pact residential facility where she had lived for the last seven weeks. Shepherd said a 25-year-old woman assaulted her mother for warning her not to steal another flatmate’s vodka. “This chick just pummelled her face in.” Christchurch-based Shepherd, who is her mother’s only New Zealand next-of-kin and her welfare guardian, did not learn of the incident until she visited her on Saturday. Shocked at her mother’s condition, she complained to management who took her mother to Dunedin Hospital. Shepherd said her mother suffered a brain injury in 2013, and survived a long-term abusive relationship resulting in her former partner being jailed. Because of the brain injury, she has been deemed to be incapable of living alone. “I trusted these people to make sure she is safe, because she is more vulnerable than she has ever been,” Shepherd said. “[Pact] haven’t dealt with this the right way, they have tried to cover it up.” Asked why her daughter was not informed of the assault, Pact chief executive Louise Carr said it was “a reasonable expectation for families to be kept informed and it’s our intention to do so, subject to clients’ wishes”. “Many of our clients are quite capable of making their own decisions regarding such issues and we respect their wishes.” She confirmed the incident was being reviewed, “and, where necessary, measures put in place to prevent them occurring again”. “As part of the incident reporting process, we will assess whether the level of support was appropriate in this instance.” Although she could not discuss specific details due to privacy concerns, “we can say that if a client is ever hurt we offer to take them for medical treatment”. “It is up to the client whether he or she wishes to accept this offer.” Police are investigating the incident. Shepherd was concerned her mother, who was an alcoholic, was also allowed to buy alcohol and not encouraged to eat decent food. She paid $125 a week to stay at the St Kilda facility, with just $100 left over for groceries. “She has been drinking three casks of wine a week, so out of $100 you tell me what she is eating,” Shepherd said. “All she lives on is mushroom and cheese scones and canned food. “I am disgusted, and there is nothing I can do.” Carr said the flats were the clients’ homes and “alcohol is not prohibited, as long as it is used moderately and does not create disturbances to the service, clients or the wider community”. Alcohol consumption had to be discussed with staff, and Pact encouraged “a healthy attitude toward alcohol consumption, as part of the health and living skills we support people with”. Shepherd said her mother was not being supported in her new home, as “she just stays in bed drinking and smoking cigarettes all day, that’s all she does”. “It sounds bad but I’ve spent my whole life being the parent, it is time for me to put my life together but I’m having to deal with this because the people that are meant to be helping me aren’t doing their jobs.”
