This is how:
A benefits cheat who fraudulently claimed £25,000 in disability payments was caught out after being spotted going swimming on holiday.
I explored a lot of the issues in this post a few months ago, but in short: Swimming is good for me, it's good for keeping my skeleton as strong as possible and helps prevent things like ribs going snap when I bend down. And news stories like this make getting that vital exercise a terrifying prospect because they fuel vigilantism and make it likely that I'll get reported to the DWP accused of "faking" because I can swim a bit.*
I concluded that post in April with the paragraph:
Next year will the DWP be reviewing the entire Paralympic team using the television footage as "evidence" that the athletes are too fit to be disabled?
When actually what happened was something far more bizarre than that, something that I couldn't possibly have imagined: Atos will be designing and building the Paralympic website, as well as providing technology support during the games. As @SaliWho put it "satire is cancelled."
* = Emphasis retrospectively added as I'm gathering from the comments I wasn't sufficiently clear as to the main problem with this case. It's not about whether or not she was actually guilty, it's about the media convincing the general public that ill/disabled people who can swim must be faking. Apologies for my initial lack of clarity; I was a bit of a zombie yesterday after the aforementioned broken rib prevented me from finding a comfortable sleep position the night before so I was trying to function on only a couple of hours sleep.
Someone might well have seen me swimming on holiday, but would they have recognised what they were seeing? - that Oh Shit! moment when you realise your shoulders are now so screwed that swimming isn't actually practical anymore, and wouldn't it have been nice if I'd realised that before I got 50m out into the water. I can pretty much guarantee they wouldn't have seen the four hours sleep it took me to recover and stop the muscle-tremors that over-exertion had triggered.
ReplyDeleteIt increasingly seems that people are being prosecuted for not living up to the public's expectations of what being disabled means, which I guess makes it a thought-crime.
From the personal research I have gleaned from the web, the people who seem to be caught doing the most fraud are those on the highest rate of mobility - in that they have told the DLA people that they can't walk at all on any day, and this seems to be where the fraud is occurring. I could be wrong. However, exercise is essential to my condition (I have fibromyalgia) and since my DLA was cut I had to stop going swimming and I have deteriorated so much I have probably cost the NHS more in extra hospital and doctor appointments. I have since reapplied to get my DLA back. It is ironic that my DLA keeps me well enough to enjoy some sort of life, to the point where others might think I am not deserving of it, and yet without it my illness deteriorates so much I am housebound. I love your blog and check daily for updates. Keep up the good work. Sarah.
ReplyDeleteI'm lost here:
ReplyDelete"Attanasio, 51, is being prosecuted by the Department of Work and Pensions who have compiled a DVD of her clad in a bikini while playing on water-slides at a French water park, sightseeing, walking up and down steep steps without the aid of a walking stick.
She was also pictured in the UK walking normally in a video that was filmed as part of a surveillance campaign by the DWP.
At no point during the video does she appear to be having difficulty walking.
The defendant admitted to the accusation in the courtroom that the “level of physical disability is better than you originally declared in her application form.”
She committed fraud. I'm bedbound, but not so disabled as to need HRC. HRM requires the disability must be severe enough that “you are unable or virtually unable to walk without severe discomfort, or at risk of endangering your life or causing deterioration in your health by making the effort to walk”.
This woman deserves punishment AFAICT.
without severe discomfort, or at risk of endangering your life or causing deterioration in your health by making the effort to walk
ReplyDeleteI can walk. I walk all the time. Around my own house, where it's safe, where I know where everything is and don't have to deal with any uncertainties of other people around me, and where I know if I fall down I can get help to a bed that isn't far away. It hurts me to walk at all, however, and pain definitely counts as severe discomfort.
In short: I claim HRM. Not in the slightest bit fraudulently. But if you were to spy on me, you would see me walking, and I doubt you would be able to see how much pain it caused me. Legally, I am unable to walk, because I am unable to walk without pain. Physically, I can and do. This distinction is what causes so much confusion.
Walking around your house =/= bombing around a waterpark
ReplyDeleteI get HRM, walking is dangerous and agonising. I can't get to the water closet without consequences.
Did you miss her admission of guilt?
I swim practically every day...yet I'd love someone to try and prove that I'm not disabled.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't surprise me if someone did try though.
Uh, read the welsh story for a bit more detail. It wasn't the fact that she was swimming, it was her running around and climbing up waterslides with no obvious problem or mobility aid that was the issue.
ReplyDeletehttp://yourcardiff.walesonline.co.uk/2011/08/23/mother-admits-benefits-fraud-after-being-pictured-riding-slides-at-french-water-park/
'Did you miss her admission of guilt?'
ReplyDeleteIf you took me to court I'd plead guilty as well, just to get it all over with.
I'm not saying she's innocent - I don't know the facts - but the article doesn't exactly give me enough facts to convince me she's guilty either.
Again, I'm not trying to defend her as I don't know her. I just don't trust the media and hate the way everyone is jumping to villify her. Hell, even if she is guilty, she's guilty of neglecting to fill out annoying beaurocratic forms - something I forget to do all the time. Not on purpose, not because I'm trying to get some extra money I'm not entitled to, but simply because my brain fog means I forget about it, or somehow convince myself that I've already done it, or try and just get overwhelmed and give up.
I just can't help but see this article as something that could so easily happen to me.
Oh, and 'Walking around your house =/= bombing around a waterpark'
No, it doesn't, but if I was having a REALLY good day and was willing to put up with being bedbound for the next week, I would so go do that.
Except I wouldn't, because I'd be terrified of THIS happening.
Some questions I have:
ReplyDeleteThey claimed that she was overpaid £25,000 (though, these costs are invariably inflated by investigators). Exactly how much did it cost to send a team of people to France to follow her and her family around with a video camera?
What are the rights of her family and presumably children NOT to be filmed?
What authority did investigators have to pursue her into an overseas jurisdiction? If they did so without legal authority is any of the evidence they submitted admissable in a UK court?!
FNGN - from my first comment:
ReplyDelete" playing on water-slides at a French water park, sightseeing, walking up and down steep steps without the aid of a walking stick.
She was also pictured in the UK walking normally in a video that was filmed as part of a surveillance campaign by the DWP.
At no point during the video does she appear to be having difficulty walking."
Water parks have steep steps and ladders everywhere. This is not a case of swimming ruling out disability, or a lone incident, or of someone coerced into admitting something that never happened. It's blatant fraud that hurts those of us who are really disabled.
Deus - I wondered that too. Maybe the holiday footage was personal stuff, home movies?
ReplyDeleteI was investigated by my local benefit claims dept. before getting a penny. In fact I was never awarded any money. Somehow the "impoverished" DWP/JCP can afford to have someone tailed for months for simply submitting a claim for Income support. My 'crime'? My mother is called (for example) Leeanne Jones, and I am called Leesa Jones.
I was telephoned by someone detailing the 'evidence' against me, and met in public by a JCP/DWP investigator (as I did not and would not agree to them visiting my home) with a thick file detailing where "I" worked, the houses "I" owned, and "my" tax records.
The working "me" was my neighbour. The property owning "Me" was my mum, and the tax records bore no relation to any of us.
It must have cost a pretty penny to tail "Me" to work, while som,eone else sat outside the house, and others dredged up bank statements, credit reports, p60s, mortgage deeds etc. All to stop me (with no income, bank accounts, or property other than a temperamental laptop!) from claiming what, sixty quid a week?
I'm pretty sure I was only selected because of my postcode.
The irony? My mother worked for Jobcentre Plus. She said it's a common tactic in high-claim areas.
So this case here is not unusual at all from my POV.
Oh, and FNGN - you know you blamed this whole thing on bureaucratic unfairness to people with 'brain fog'? (reaching a bit there) And how you claimed it was a mere oversight, and maybe a one-off treat for the woman? Nope. Not the first activity holiday she's undertaken while being 'immobile and in need of round the clock care'. It has been going on for years. Read the linked articles, watch the video on the BBC website of her gadding about and performing physically strenuous activities completely unaided.
I can't get off my own loo and sometimes have to sleep there = MRC (and pleased enough with that as I'm not 100% dependent, as per the criteria for HRC) She's going on activity holidays, leaping around a water park in the south of France (where the heat alone would render me immobile) and managed to get HRM+HRC? She's a lying liar.
As much as I hate to link to The sun, read this: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3767600/Benefits-cheat-rumbled-on-slide.html
Watch her whizzing down slides then climbing out of the water unaided and then up a steep set of stairs. Look at the pics of her climbing cobbled banks. Even pre-disability that was hard for me, yet she claimed to be too weak to even walk at all.
She's the type of person who casts suspicion on every claimant with an invisible illness. Sadly there are some 'conditions' that have no proof other than what the patient claims, no diagnostic tests, no way to rule out fraudsters and liar who co-opt these unprovable nebulous conditions out of sheer malice.
@Colder - you can't know she is "a lying liar" without knowing both what she wrote on her application form and the full extent of her current health.
ReplyDeleteI receive both HRC and HRM, my condition is variable and whilst often bedbound I have occasional days out where I might appear largely normal. I never claimed to be unable to walk on my application form, I stated that walking causes pain and physical damage and from this the decision maker decided to classify me as unable to walk.
Without knowing all the facts of this case (such as reading her medical reports and application forms) we can't judge this woman.
The DWP should focus on stopping 'real' fraud (such as pensions claimed for people who are dead and housing benefit for a fake tenancy), rather than chasing after people with serious medical conditions who might manage the occasional 'normal' looking day.
Colder, you seem to have a very restrictive view of mobility impairment. I don't get HRM, but I'm clearly borderline, I can rarely manage to walk 50m without significant pain (the general standard for 'virtually unable to work' and eligibility for HRM), most of the time I can't even sit down comfortably (lying flat right now). Yet I can also happily fly a glider, sail a yacht, go white-water rafting. I could probably manage a slide in a water park, though at the cost of some significant pain on the steps, but could you see that? In all of those cases there is a cost for doing it, months, on one occasion a year, recovering from blowing my pacing, but no one can see that but me. You say 'the heat alone would render me immobile', that's you, put me in 40 degree heat and I'm far _more_ mobile than usual, how do you know that isn't true of the lady in the reports? Then there is the innate variability in disability, at my worst I can't stand up at all without considerable pain, at my best I can potentially walk miles, pick my typical day and I'm in trouble in 50m. But how do you, or anyone else, anyone but me, know what kind of day I'm having?
ReplyDeleteNone of this says that she wasn't rightfully convicted, none of us have any sympathy for her if she was, but the information provided by the tabloids is not sufficient to demonstrate that she was fraudulently claiming HRM or HRC, but is enough to convince those with little knowledge of disability that anyone who can have any kind of enjoyment on holiday cannot be genuinely disabled, and when you strip away the rhetoric, that is encouraging discrimination and causing disabled people to live in fear.
There will always be one or two fraudsters - Doesmt mean we all are - They just try to make the sheep of the country believe that
ReplyDeletealso - I fear for this whole country with Cameron trashing the place
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/content/NHS-legal-advice/
'None of this says that she wasn't rightfully convicted, none of us have any sympathy for her if she was, but the information provided by the tabloids is not sufficient to demonstrate that she was fraudulently claiming HRM or HRC, but is enough to convince those with little knowledge of disability that anyone who can have any kind of enjoyment on holiday cannot be genuinely disabled, and when you strip away the rhetoric, that is encouraging discrimination and causing disabled people to live in fear.'
ReplyDeleteThank you. I seemed to have difficulty getting that part of my argument across. You put it into words much better than me. <3
@FNGN: He also managed, in one paragraph, to convey what I seemingly failed to in the post.
ReplyDelete