A rude kid and his rotten orange

At the beginning of the year 2022, a storm of brutal violence has fallen on our consciences. At the heart of the hurricane, the investigation led by the journalist Victor Castanet in the environment of the EHPAD (Establishments of Accommodation for Dependent Old People) in France, managed by the private group ORPEA. This investigation lasted three years and was carried out with numerous testimonies, including those of staff members who courageously agreed to participate and put their safety and jobs at risk, to say the least. The publication of « Les Fossoyeurs » immediately caused upheaval, such as the dismissal of ORPEA’s management, but the overall consequences are still incalculable. 

Moreover, ORPEA’s directors felt their downfall was deepening because they offered the modest sum of fifteen million euros to Victor Castanet to end his investigation. What he refused and what allowed the eyes of the opinion to land on this wound that disfigures us all. A well known or strongly suspected reality has thus jumped out at us, erasing doubts and procrastinations. The creation of these private structures with their capitalization on the stock market and the resulting search for profit has given birth to a monstrous system where the human being is subjected to the shareholder. The abuse of residents is an inevitable consequence of this, abuse resulting from the search for profit and the maximum compression of expenses, abuse driving the infernal machine.

In this case, where luxury rubs shoulders with baseness and ignominy, the banality of evil bursts out like a rotten orange thrown against a wall by a misbehaving kid*.

ORPEA, the world’s leading private developer of EHPADs and nursing homes, comes to us from France, the country of our childhood, and seeks to hide the misery of its old people under the carpets and golden panelling of the luxury rooms of its retirement palaces.
In its desire to expand its influence, ORPEA brought its benefits to our small kingdom where, miraculously, it was welcomed with open arms by our political and financial decision-makers.
And, for good reason, received as a real godsend, the arrival of these valiant heralds of the well-being of humanity, came to fill the gaps created by the disinvestments of all kinds, consequences of neoliberal policies.
The PCSWs were (and still are) hanging on by a thread. There was a lack of space for both the old rich and the old poor.
All we had to do was roll out the red carpet to these new captains of industry and put the fate of our seniors in their hands. This was done, without asking for too many guarantees as it should be.

But how on earth did this incredible mistreatment of the dependent persons entrusted to the care of these Homes take place?

If one reflects on it, one realizes that it is difficult to distinguish any logic in this race towards the destruction of all values, be they human or material.
The first to express their astonishment are the very managers of ORPEA who, wading in the shit they have generously spread in their business, raise their arms to the sky and claim their innocence.

« We have done nothing wrong! » And, indeed, we must understand them. What did they do? Simply what this good, profit-oriented society taught them to do: they wanted to get rich! And that ill-bred kid, Victor Castanet, with his rotten orange, is truly malicious with his disingenuous insinuations and denunciation of greed. Finally, it would be better to say the search for enrichment of intrepid shareholders.

But I said above that it was difficult to understand the process that led to the scandal that is on everyone’s mind and in the media.
Among others, the particular case of Françoise Dorin, a famous author and actress who met a sad end, abandoned to herself and to illness in the ORPEA house in Auteuil, a house that served as a showcase to convince skeptics, if any were needed, of the opportunity to commit their capital to this new kind of capitalist enterprise: speculating on our elderly.
Françoise Dorin paid a monthly rent of 16.000 € which gave her the right, at least one can suppose it, to all the services related to her well-being. However, his fate was settled with such promptness that he left his own practitioner amazed at his ability to expedite! After three months, Françoise Dorin passed from life to death. We devoured the prey and the rent in one go! No matter, the source is inexhaustible.

Again, the consequences of the revelations made by Victor Castanet and « Les Fossoyeurs » are incalculable. As a public service organization, it forces the public to consider the painful issue of the mistreatment of our elderly in the treatment we give them at the end of their lives.

It would have been nice if, at the end of a life dedicated to the service of the community, these seniors had received some consideration and kindness. But the opposite is true, and this at a time when seniors, diminished by illness, need the most attention!

I look forward to reading the results of Victor Castanet’s three-year investigation. But even if we are overwhelmed with anger, we must not limit ourselves to denouncing ORPEA’s exactions alone. Fanned by two years of crisis, dysfunctions have accumulated throughout the nursing home sector. They have thrived on original flaws and neglect and are present in Belgium in all three pillars. Everything is divided into pillars: the public pillar, managed by the CPAS (public authorities), the associative pillar managed by the mutual insurance companies, and finally the private sector, which has taken on an increasingly large role in recent years, with ORPEA taking the lion’s share.

Have we been in a state of prostration all this time?

Since its inception in 2018, theAngry Old Men’s Gang, of which the signatory is a member, has worked to expose the scourge of abuse in the Kingdom’s Rest and Care Homes. ORPEA was already being pilloried.
Michel Huisman, co-founder and spokesperson for the Gang, has been tirelessly carrying our protests to the media and to political leaders.
Almost everywhere, the reception was attentive and benevolent and the official media reflected positively the word of the Gang. Despite the alarming situation, the morale of the activists was high and a certain hope was emerging.
Excessive naivety no doubt on our part to believe in the magic of our actions. The media welcomed us because we were « salesmen » with our « senior youthful » humor and our pacifist anarchist looks and, from then on, the political world, a good follower as usual, opened the doors of its offices and listened to us kindly.

For in order to keep the situation as it was, it was important to pretend to act.

It is certainly not the combativeness of the members of the Gang of Angry Old Men and of Michel Huisman in particular, which was the cause of the failure of our will to improve the fate of the old men and women (that is the official terminology of the Gang) in the so-called Rest Homes! We will not go back to the ignoble restrictions on food and material (bed sheets and others), the media did it abundantly during these last… few days. No, it’s not the Gang’s fault! The statement may seem silly, but one can never be too careful in these times of unexpected value reversals. Indeed, one can already hear voices defending the capitalist system of rest homes, saying that it is a necessary evil, and the facts, those damn facts that cannot lie, seem to prove them right. As soon as the news of the dismissal of ORPEA’s CEO was known, the shares on the stock exchange rose by 9.6%. Reversal of values, the defense of capitalist interests takes precedence over the welfare of residents and another slap in the face of the citizens.

The vast majority of NCM staff are held hostage by a system that makes every action and every service conditional on the sacrosanct rule of profit. And the reprisals to fall if challenged! What Victor Castanet’s pamphlet cries out is that the miserable rags of our solidarity are floating in the icy wind of indifference.

Let’s be aware of the upcoming steps of the Angry Old Men’s Gang. Independent, free of political pressure, it has a leverage capacity that can make the difference at the kairos moment.

Thanks to Jacques Prévert for his poem  » Tentative description of a dinner of heads in Paris-France « .