"Direct Deposits Are Safer"

It is nothing short of amazing that people can feel themselves somehow entitled to take advantage of the vulnerable in their care. People in a position of particular trust, working among the physically and mentally handicapped, those whose frail condition and need is so acute that they are incapable of looking after their own most elemental needs.

Their dependence on the skills and compassion of those entrusted to look to their needs as health professionals is deep and that very depth of need makes them all the more vulnerable to violations of trust. It's a hard world we live in, and there simply are those among us whose sense of personal responsibility toward others is slighter than it should be.

To the extent that they are capable of depersonalizing the needs of others, while treating them perfunctorily as professional aids, and in the process of gaining trust, take it upon themselves to drain the bank accounts of those entrusting their everyday financial resources to trusted aids.

What is amazing is the short-sightedness of people like the Cumberland Lodge administrator who has been charged with defrauding elderly residents of the lodge of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the space of ten years. In fact, involved in this clumsy scheme are two women living in Embrun, a mother and daughter, both employed at the lodge where eighteen separate residents were defrauded by the pair.

Residents of the lodge pay their own utilities, for cable, telephone or any other bills that come up on a regular basis. The pair now accused of theft and fraud took it upon themselves to assist the elderly impaired residents in paying their bills, which also included pharmaceuticals from the in-residence pharmacy. It is the misfortune of the trusting residents that the funds they supplied to pay their invoiced bills were simply absorbed by the administrator and her daughter.

The pair appeared also to have taken it upon themselves to relieve the people under their care of jewellery and cash. What is truly puzzling about all of this apart from the betrayal of trust, is that the two women were incapable of thinking down the road a little bit. When it would be revealed that something had gone wrong. When service providers would finally present unpaid invoices totalling amounts representative of long-unpaid bills.

And since they were the individuals to whom cheques were entrusted to pay those invoices, surely it should have been obvious to them that their chickens would come home to roost...? The facility, which houses 85 residents as a private residential care facility providing personal care, meals, health services and housekeeping to seniors and people with moderate disabilities is now absent an administrator.

And that erstwhile administrator faces charges inclusive of fraud, theft, possession of the proceeds of crime, misappropriation of money held under direction, uttering a forged document, and a slew of other charges, adding up to 25 in all. Representing yet another story in the accounting of human relations given a failing grade.