Inquiry into murdering nurse hears from survivor, families
The families of eight people killed by an Ontario nurse, as well as one of her surviving victims, lamented a fundamental lack of respect for human life in the province’s long-term-care system Monday as they addressed a public inquiry probing the circumstances around the woman’s crimes.
In closing submissions at the inquiry into Elizabeth Wettlaufer those most impacted by her actions called for an array of changes, from nursing-home staffing levels to coroner protocols, but railed most emphatically against what they saw as a lack of compassion that harmed everyone involved.
“The people with needs have a voice. Now that we’re sick, nobody listens,” said Beverly Bertram, who survived one of Wettlaufer’s attacks in August 2016. “If there was a change I would like to see happen, that would be respect given. Respect for individuals regardless of the roles they’ve played or will play in the future.”
Wettlaufer, 51, confessed to murdering eight patients and attempting to kill several more over the course of nearly a decade by injecting them with overdoses of insulin at care homes and private residences across the province.
Bertram pulled no punches when outlining the effect Wettlaufer’s attack had on her. The 70-year-old said she is “consumed” by Wettlaufer and her actions.
But Bertram also told the inquiry that the same lack of compassion that allowed her fellow victims to die in relative obscurity also harmed their confessed killer, who told investigators about her long-standing struggles with addiction and mental health issues.
“She cried for help many times and none was given,” Bertram told the inquiry. “She was not paid attention to, and this is the aftermath of her journey.”
The son of one of Wettlaufer’s other victims also emphasized what he described as the system’s lack of compassion, but his emotional remarks were directed at what he perceived as the people and systems that allowed the nurse to prey on patients with impunity for years.
“I saw finger-pointing, I saw people throwing each other under the bus, I saw a lack of compassion,” said Arpad Horvath Jr. “For them to just come and put money and reputation in front of human life is pathetic.”
Horvath Jr.’s father, 75-yearold Arpad Horvath Sr., became the last of Wettlaufer’s victims when he died at a London, Ont. nursing home in 2014. His death came after Wettlaufer had killed seven residents of Caressant Care in Woodstock, Ont. The inquiry heard her crimes went undetected, and she likely never would have been caught without her confession to police.
Submissions from families of Wettlaufer’s victims included calls for better reference checks at long-term-care facilities, overhauls to inspection protocols at the health ministry, and standardization of death investigation practices among Ontario’s coroners.