Thursday, March 28, 2024

FULL STORY:Old woman taken from filthy home

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An elderly couple whose marriage four years ago evoked much public interest were parted yesterday when the woman’s relatives moved in and plucked her from the squalid conditions in which she was living.
After Estelle Butcher, who will be 100 on February 28, was moved out, public health workers moved in to clean the house at Dean’s Village, St Thomas. The husband, Navarro Bayley, 87, also dirty and unkempt, kept repeating, “I love my wife.” In one cluttered bedroom, Butcher – who mothered 10 children, of whom eight are alive – was found sitting on the floor, dazed and filthy.
Relatives took her to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where she was admitted for a check-up and a medical report.
Relatives said they want to place her in a nursing home.
When a MIDWEEK NATION team visited the house, at the request of Butcher’s relatives, the stench in the eight-room wall building was overbearing.
Human faeces was in one room and there was also the smell of urine. Boxes and bags of garbage, empty bottles, and rotting food were all over the place.
In the yard, there were four starving dogs. Their feeding and water bowls were empty and dry.
A member of the team that cleaned the house last year said, “For weeks we have been coming here trying to get in to clean the house but he [Bayley] won’t let us get in there.”Butcher’s grandson Sean Butcher said that the family’s relationship with Bayley was a “long story” – even before the couple got married on May 23, 2009.  
“Since she got married it became worse and he started deciding who he (the husband) wanted to come and visit her and when they should come and you must call before you come. If he doesn’t approve of your presence you can’t come,” said Butcher.
Butcher also said that Bayley barred nurses from the Warrens Polyclinic and members of the Home Help service from entering the house.“For me as a family member my conscience is clear. Those health inspectors tried to get in to clean in there for weeks,” the grandson said. “He would always try to make an excuse that he would get the place clean up.
“I was told by neighbours that sometimes he left home on mornings and she was in there all by herself. He would put a sign on the door saying ‘we are out’ but the situation is that she was in there all by herself,” the grandson said.
Bayley said, however, that the claims of his inlaws were false. He repeated that he loved his wife and would always take care of her.
“Them telling lies on me. I was sick for a little while but I take care of her. Somebody was suppose to come and help me with her but I don’t know what happened,” said Bayley. Bayley and his wife were splashed in a Front Page picture of the May 24, 2009 issue of the SUNDAY SUN which also featured them in an article headlined: Lovebirds.
They had been living together for 30 years after falling in love at first sight, they reported.

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