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Elderly Man Left Home Alone, Bound With Duct Tape, While Son Worked

September 3, 2010 at 12:10 pm by Jaded

Hanover, MA – Don’t know what to do with your pesky old father while you go out and earn a living? Can’t afford to stick him in a home? Two words: Duct. Tape. That’s right, just duct tape the old dude to a chair and you bought yourself hours of freedom, baby. You’re probably saying to yourself, “Sounds great! But what’s the catch?” Well, some people won’t appreciate your inventiveness and ability to think out of the box, and you may just find yourself in a spot of legal trouble…kinda like John Hallinan. He’s accused of binding his 93-year-old father in duct tape and leaving him home alone to roll around in his own shit all day. Deputies showed up at the home Hallinan shares with his father after receiving a tip from a group of ladies who regularly cleaned the home. They found the elderly man laying on the kitchen floor wearing nothing but duct tape, a dirty t-shirt, and a shit filled diaper. Police said the man was near death. He was extremely thin, dehydrated, incoherent, very dirty, and covered in bruises and sores. Hallinan, 68, reportedly told police he bound his father with tape so he could work. He admits that he hasn’t had his father seen by a doctor in more than a year. Hell, some of the neighbors didn’t even know the old guy lived there. Hallinan has been charged with assault and battery on a person over 60 and remains jailed without bail. I understand Hallinan’s need to work, really. I also realize that finding inexpensive, quality care can be quite difficult, but damn…I would think the man could have come up with an arrangement that’s a tad more humane. As of Wednesday, Hallinan’s father was listed in fair condition at South Shore Hospital.

Tags: duct tape, Elder Abuse, Hanover, Massachusetts, Negligence

21 Comments

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Anonymous

That old man has one hell of a will to live! Good on ya!
aka jas

He has a cleaning lady for fucks sake! There is no excuse for this. The State helps, not 100%, but helps with situations like this. The city brings meals to elderly. All you have to do is do the paperwork. There are individuals (not certified) that are willing to help around the house and care for elderly and sick for a price that is affordable. I can only think that this elderly mans son is a sadist and loved to watch this.
Anonymous

Damn! I have an uncle named John Hallinan, with a house that looks WAY too much like that! Luckily he lives in WI and his dad is dead, so he’s in the clear…though my extended family comes from the east coast and I know my mom has two cousins named John Hallinan, as well.= Hope I’m not related, even distantly. What a fucking dumbass. Could have at least chained his dad to a bed or something. No need to be so bound, even if he’s senile and shit…
Tundratot

Shame. So close to retiring himself . . . Maybe he had to restrain dad from doing too much around the house. Ya think?
http://www.facebook.com/people/John-House/1011555524 John House

Oh, web advertisements. In the Amazon.com box underneath this article, there are links for duct tape, and I found that sad and amusing (I know this happens all the time, but in this case it jumped out at me).
Kwumey

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO@ the amazon DUCT Tape LINK under the story!!!!
Kwumey

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO@ the amazon DUCT Tape LINK under the story!!!!
http://www.dreamindemon.com Morbid

It truly is the only reason why I have Amazon ads on the site…just to see how unintentionally callous some of the ads are when compared to the stories.
Anonymous

WTH? Did he think he could just treat the old man like a POW? He hired people to clean, but not to care for the man who gave him life? There are people who do that for a living, caring for the elderly. What an asshat.
TARHEELS BABY!

This is really fucked. Why not just put your father into the state’s care? I wonder if the father had some kind of assets the son was looking to inherit after his death, and he didn’t want to see them all going towards his father’s end-of-life care. Fuckin scumbag
Kwumey

and a distinctly classic touch..lol
nakedeyes

MacGyver would be SOOO disappointed.
Anonymous

Awesome of the ladies to call the cops. Seems like any decent person would have done so, but some people wouldn’t have bothered–wouldn’t have wanted to get involved, much less piss off their meal-ticket/employer or get him into trouble. And there’s no excuse for any of what he did, which was not just limited to the duct tape. I have no sympathy for this son at all. This is no more excusable than duct-taping your children and leaving them lying in their shit. As for his needing to work, he seems to be able to afford to pay people to come and clean his home, so I don’t buy his story anyway. But about that duct tape…can you imagine what it would do to the thin skin of an elderly person to remove duct tape from them? No wonder he was covered in sores.
Anonymous

I had an aunt with alzheimers. We had her in a home. Her sister, another aunt of mine obviously, threw an absolute bitch fit and removed her from the home. Put Aunt#1 back in her house that was set up to be sold to help pay for care. We are not well off people and none of us had the skills needed to deal with someone with a pretty advanced case of the disease. Aunt#2 did not have those skills either. While Aunt#1 could still speak, toilet on her own, feed herself, walk, etc things were fine. But eventually she could do none of those things. At this point Aunt#2 took to TYING Aunt#1 into her chair or bed. She’d then go down the street to her own house and leave Aunt#1 completely unsupervised. Things got even worse. She decided that doctors didn’t know WTF they were talking about and Aunt#1 just needed time to heal. So she stopped taking her to the doctor. She stopped giving her medicine. She stopped following the meal plan provided and started stuffing her full of cheap crap like cans of Ravioli. Anyway, neighbors wrote letters and made calls to report her, I called to report her. They sent out people to check but they’d always call and let her know they were coming. So she’d clean up and put on her “I’m just a sweet old lady” act and nothing would be done. Aunt#1 was bruised up and my dad said he witnessed Aunt#2 freaking out and strangling her once. It was just a huge mess. I’m not trying to be depressing, but I’m just saying calling social services isn’t going to work any miracles.
Angela

The man was 68yrs old that was doing this…are we sure he knew about the resources out there to help him? If he left his father like this with cleaning ladies coming to the house, knowing they’d see him, I believe it’s possible that he didn’t know or realize that he was breaking the law. He might have been doing what he thought was the best for the both of them to get by…especially if he HAS to work to make ends meet…IMO
Anonymous

Bullshit. Would you say the same if this were a 3 year old instead of a 93 year old? I don’t mean to be rude, because these thoughts ran through my head for a fraction of second, too, but seriously. There’s no excuse at all for what he did. None. Zero. Kindly consider as well that it’s not just the matter of duct tape. The man was covered in sores and almost dead from dehydration. And I’m sure he was not the one cashing his own social security checks, either.
Svetlana

Wow, that is the most depressing thing I ever heard. What happened with your aunts? Did Aunt 1 escape the clutches of Aunt 2?
Logic316

There was no reason for this to happen. If you’re unable to look after a disabled person and he has no assets to be able to afford private nursing care, you can always put him in a state-run nursing home and Medicare would be legally obligated to pick up the cost. There is no law requiring you to support or care for your parents when they get old, but if you can’t do the job, there’s no excuse for failing to put them into the hands of a proper caregiver.
KyFyre

Ya know, I don’t always agree with placing elderly in nursing homes, far too many of those places have issues with poor treatment of the patients, thefts from some employees etc. But in this case I wish he’d taken his chances and placed his dad in one. Heck, I’ve spent the biggest part of my life going to the homes of the elderly and giving them care so they don’t have to be placed in nursing homes. A group of us ladies would cook, clean, bathe & dress them, give them their medications and make sure they got to doctors appointments on time and we rotated shifts so that one of us was ALWAYS there so their needs were and are met. Many times, on holidays if their own families were too busy to spend time with them, we saw to it the elderly folk were included with our own family events so that they weren’t left alone or left out. If this man could afford to hire cleaning ladies, why did he not hire on someone to come in and take care of his dad? There are plenty of people like me and the ladies I work with that genuinely do care for our elderly that would have taken care of him, so no there is no excuse for what he did to his father.
Anonymous

Did I mention I can break through being bound in duct tape? BTDT
Anonymous

Did I mention I can break through being bound in duct tape? BTDT