OWNERS OF HOME FOR ELDERLY INDICTED
The Record (New Jersey)
COUPLE ARE CHARGED IN N.Y. WITH NEGLECT OF A TENANT
Author: BRIAN KLADKO, Staff Writer; The Record
The owner of a Montvale boardinghouse that was closed last week for unsanitary and unsupervised conditions, and her husband, have been indicted in Rockland County, N.Y., for the alleged neglect of an elderly woman in another boardinghouse.
Maureen and Michael Culhane were charged with endangering the welfare of a vulnerable, elderly person, reckless endangerment, and endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person, officials in the Rockland County District Attorney's Office said.
The two were being held Thursday evening at the Rockland County Jail in New City on $75,000 bail each.
The charges stem from the discovery in January of an 87-year-old woman at a Pearl River boardinghouse owned by the couple. Firefighters, responding to an alarm at the Adare Manor, found the woman locked inside a room, suffering from bed sores, infections, malnutrition, and dehydration, the district attorney's staff said. She was also suffering from senile dementia.
The severity of the bed sores indicated that the woman, the only tenant in the building, had not been moved in weeks, the prosecutors said. She was taken from the home and hospitalized.
The woman had lived in the Hillas Vale Guest Lodge, a Montvale boardinghouse owned by Maureen Culhane. She had been placed there by her relatives, authorities said.
The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, after coming close to shuttering the West Grand Avenue boardinghouse on two previous occasions, removed the Montvale home's nine tenants last week.
Residents interviewed last week said Culhane served skimpy meals, provided little heat and hot water, and neglected housekeeping to the point that feces would remain on the floor of a bathroom for weeks.
The Montvale Board of Health issued a statement Thursday applauding the state's action.
"Elderly people were housed in a health care facility which didn't offer care necessary for their individual needs," said Joyce Cohen, the board's president.
Montvale Health Officer Rod W. Preiss said he once found a "mentally challenged gentleman who was allowed to urinate in a bucket in his room."
Hillas Vale was not a nursing home or an assisted living facility, so it did not provide medical services or organized activities. It was simply a boardinghouse that catered mainly to the elderly.
The residents are staying at two nearby homes indefinitely, at state expense, until permanent accommodations can be found.
Maureen Culhane also owns the 18-bed Shannon Rest Home in Waldwick. State officials say they have discovered similar conditions there. They have not closed that boardinghouse but have forbidden new admissions.
Culhane faces a $10,000 fine for not allowing state inspectors into the Montvale house. Bergen County Prosecutor William H. Schmidt has said his staff will investigate whether criminal charges should be filed against her.
Culhane, when contacted Saturday about the closing of her Montvale home, would not discuss allegations by New Jersey officials and her former tenants. But she did say some of the tenants were removed against their will. One woman, she said, "had to be torn away from me."