From Military Times:
“Holyoke Soldiers’ Home
Ex-Superintendent Admits to Neglect”
The former superintendent of the
Holyoke Soldiers Home, where at least 76 veterans died in the early days of the
COVID-19 pandemic, has admitted to five charges of neglect but will serve no
prison time. Judge Edward McDonough, Jr., accepted Bennett Walsh plea admitting
to sufficient facts to five counts of neglect of an elder related to Walsh’s
decision to combine multiple dementia care units into one in March 2020, which
in turn led to the deaths of numerous residents who had not been exposed to the
virus before the change.
McDonough ordered the case be
continued for three months without a finding and ordered Walsh to comply with
probationary conditions including that Walsh not contact the victims’ families
or work in a medical field. McDonough did not impose probation itself. This
finding was identical to the defense’s recommendation. The prosecution
recommended that Walsh serve three years of probation with the first year under
home confinement. The prosecutor said the recommendation for only probation and
not any prison was made because Walsh had a clean criminal record. The maximum
penalty for each count was three years in state prison. Over the course of the
roughly hour-long hearing in Hampshire Superior Court in Northampton, the
prosecution and the defense painted different pictures of the crisis at the
Soldiers Home.
The prosecutor said that the
conditions of the consolidated dementia care unit “were quite bad” and had been
described variously by those who witnessed it as “a war zone,” “a battlefield,”
and “the worst I have ever seen.” The prosecutor described the consolidated
unit as overly ad hoc, and that dementia care patients were seen wandering
around naked, or nearly so, and crammed so tightly that there were double the
allowed number of people per room. When the unit was first created, the
prosecutor argued, five of nine residents who were assigned to live in the
dining room were asymptomatic for COVID19, but the cramped conditions and lack
of medical care caused them to come down with the fatal virus. Walsh said
during his change of plea that he accepted there were sufficient facts to
convict him of neglect, but that he does “not admit that such a decision was
wanton and reckless in light of the situation.” Walsh and his attorney said
that Walsh, a career military man, had assessed the dire staffing shortage in
light of the current guidance coming from state and federal leaders in those
confused, early days of COVID. Walsh’s attorney said that in the weeks leading
up to the crisis at the Soldiers Home, the flu had been bad in Massachusetts
but the state had only seen one confirmed case of COVID-19. He said that
leaders sent out an email basically saying that, “Yes, it is very contagious
but it is also not a danger to the majority of people who catch it.”
^ Sadly even when guilty he is
given a very light sentence while 76 Veterans suffered and died horribly under
his supervision. This is not justice. ^
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