A woman whose mother was left with a broken arm and dislocated shoulder after an incident in her Auckland retirement village says not enough is being done to make sure residents are safe.
Janice Foreman's injuries were captured on video, which was released to her daughter Nicky Foreman and seen by Nine to Noon.
In the video, a carer at the Edmund Hillary Retirement Village is shown "yanking" Janice by the arm. Moments later, the elderly woman is seen lying on the floor for some time, with no one coming to comfort her, and others stepping over her as she cries in pain.
It was six hours before she was finally taken to Auckland City Hospital, where she had to stay for months.
Ryman admitted what happened should not have occurred and was sincerely sorry for the harm caused. The carer had since left Ryman.
Janice was now in another facility, but Nicky said Ryman had not done enough to ensure other residents still there were safe, and that they made the process following her mother's abuse as difficult as possible.
'Snapped clean in half'
Nicky called the footage "quite shocking".
"We were called – no ambulance called – and, when I arrived, I could see that she had a dislocated shoulder. It was very apparent but they were waiting for a mobile x-ray machine to come.
"Eventually, after over six hours, she went to the hospital and she had a dislocated shoulder and her arm was snapped clean in half… and then, when I saw the footage, I was shocked."
She said the carer did "three big, strong yanking movements" while holding Janice's arm. The video then glitches for a couple of seconds.
"The next thing you see is mum on the ground… she lands in full force on her arm. And then, and you can see that the arm's like a piece of jelly, and you see that the carer… pick up her arm and almost drop it back on the ground again."
Others in the room – including a registered nurse that arrives a few minutes later – fail to help Janice, Nicky said. After a while they "pull her up from under her armpits onto her feet, which doesn't follow any kind of protocol that you would use for an injury".
Janice spent the next three months in hospital, which "sped up the Alzheimer's process exponentially".
"She was definitely a markedly different person… it was like sort of going along a river and then going down a rapid, she's heading off a big cliff, she dropped, there was a big decline in her cognition."
She was moved to another facility, Arran Court, but was currently back in hospital.
"It's been incredibly difficult, difficult to watch, but also difficult to deal with Ryman and just their attitude towards the whole process."
Nicky said, at first, Ryman claimed her mother had "just fallen over". Suspicious, she asked to see the video.
"There's a critical around 1.6 seconds missing at the exact moment. So you see the three tugging movements, but then there's a big piece missing, and then you see her on the ground…
"I was told that the video system was old, and that it had just glitched coincidentally at that exact moment."
The video system had still not been upgraded, she said the CEO told her. Ryman said the camera was not faulty but had been replaced anyway.
"It's been very frustrating from start to finish. There were no notes written up for the day of the incident at all… the notes were post-dated and filled in," she told the programme.
"I had to chase them every step of the way. And even the meeting I had several months ago where they were to tell me what they've done to update, I had to chase for that meeting. It took me 10 days of them mucking me around and giving me different times and so clearly this was a very low priority for them."
Not the first issue raised
Nicky said she'd flagged other incidents before the injury.
"Mum went twice 12 days without being showered. And so I was constantly battling, you know, asking them why things weren't done [and I was] often met with just a sort of, or as far as the showering went, they told me that they couldn't make her."
Janice's wedding ring also vanished – "forcibly removed" – leaving her with a bruise, Nicky said, and was never recovered.
"Every time we brought up things like that, you know, things went missing all the time, but particularly that, we were always told, 'Oh, there would be an investigation'. We never, ever heard anything again."
She said she was told by the Health and Disability Commissioner there was an 18-month lag time on investigations, with just two people covering incidents in aged care.
No data, no training
Dr Yoram Barak is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Otago School of Medicine and consultant psychogeriatrician at Health New Zealand Southern. His research interest and expertise was in old-age psychiatry, dementia prevention and suicide.
He said elder abuse was "huge" in New Zealand, and it started at the top.
"Ageism is rife in our government. Policy decisions do not really look into improving the quality of life of people who age in New Zealand," he told Nine to Noon.
"Elder abuse in New Zealand is huge. There has been a fair attempt to address that by the Office for Seniors and [the Ministry for Social Development], but they ran out of funds."
Barak said there was no official data on the prevalence of abuse in rest homes.
"But – if we can generalise or take numbers from Australia, the US and China, where they do have information – reports are that anywhere from 40% to 45% of older adults in what Americans call nursing homes, what we would call rest homes, are victims of elder abuse.
"There is no reason, I'm afraid, to think that the rates would be lower here in New Zealand, especially given that our community-dwelling older adults' rates of abuse are the highest in the Western world."
He said there was "very little or none at all" training and mentoring for staff in aged care.
Ryman's response
In a statement to Nine to Noon, Ryman chief operations officer Marsha Cadman called it a "serious and deeply distressing incident" for which Ryman was "sincerely sorry".
"We accept responsibility for what occurred when she was in our care. The actions of the former employee were completely unacceptable and fell well below the standards Ryman tolerates or expects of our people and the care we provide. We have unreservedly apologised to the family.
"As soon as we became aware of the incident, we acted immediately. We informed the family, launched a full investigation, dismissed the employee and supported the authorities in their investigation of the former employee.
"The CCTV footage was provided to the family in full, permanently retained and shared with the authorities.
"Following the incident, we undertook additional internal and independent reviews and have implemented changes to strengthen our systems, oversight and staff training.
"While the camera was not faulty, we also undertook upgrades and installed new cameras in December 2025 to strengthen oversight.
"While incidents like this are extremely rare, even one is too many. Our focus remains firmly on ensuring the safety, dignity and well-being of every resident in our care."
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