A nursing home is facing controversy for putting plastic bags over body parts of dementia patients and stuffing them into diapers.

The patient’s family says it’s abuse, and police are investigating.

Reporter Gong Kook-jin.

[Reporter]
A man lying in a diaper.

When the diaper is removed, his genitals are tied in a translucent plastic bag.

Inside the bag was another diaper.

This is the condition of a dementia patient in his 50s who was discharged from a nursing home in Gunsan on April 19.

[Ms. Kim Mo / Wife of the affected patient]안전놀이터
“I don’t think he would have done that while he was in the nursing home, I don’t think he was being taken advantage of, he has cognitive functions, how hard it must have been for him.”

Family members, who later viewed the CCTV, claim that caregivers made them feel humiliated by changing diapers in the four-person room without covering them.

[Ms. Kim / wife of affected patient]
“The resident next to me turned her head to look at me, and she was doing diaper care without a shield, and her excuse for doing so was that she was ‘afraid of breaking her skin’.”

The patient, who has a level 3 disability, was admitted to the home in February after developing frontotemporal dementia and becoming immobile.

However, since entering the nursing home, the patient’s calves and armpits have been rubbed, and the family has also raised allegations of assault.

[Field sound]
“Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit.”

The wife’s report prompted a disability rights advocacy organization and police to investigate.

[Lee Yong-jun / Director of the Jeollabuk-do Disability Rights Advocacy Organization]
“The uncovered parts can cause enough sexual humiliation, and this case is abuse based on many circumstances.”

The caregivers reportedly said during the investigation that they did it for “convenience.”

Channel A reached out to the nursing home for comment, but they declined to respond.

I’m Gong Gook-jin, Channel A News.