If only all crimes were this easy to solve.
Care worker Kerry Collinson stole two cheques from the home of a dying man, made one out for £200 and cashed it.
The proof of her guilt was as plain as her name on the cheque, yet after officers finally got around to interviewing her, they decided that a caution was all she deserved. It would seem that they did not consider such an obvious case of fraud to be a criminal offence.
Collinson’s victims were Ellen Stonehouse and her 74-year-old husband David. He suffered from dementia and had returned from hospital to his home in Hull to spend his final days with his family in familiar surroundings.
“We’d never had a carer before but Mum was shattered so we agreed to have one,” his daughter Katie said.
“We had a hospital bed for dad in the back room downstairs, that’s where this carer was, and my mum and daughter were asleep upstairs.
“I live next door, and in the morning, the carer was saying how she’d looked after him and made him comfortable.”
David died two days later. No one spotted anything untoward until Ellen noticed an unexplained £200 debit on her bank statement.
“We contacted the bank and they told us the name of the person who had cashed the cheque,” said Katie.
“We didn’t recognise ‘Kerry Collinson’ at first and then remembered it was the carer.
“She had stolen two cheques and made out one for £200.
“My dad could not talk or move and she had been going through our stuff while she was meant to be caring for him.”
What followed was never about the money for the family, it was about ensuring that someone who so dreadfully abused a position of trust got the justice they deserved.
With such a clear-cut crime, the family assumed the police would be swift to act. They were wrong.
“The police were useless, we had to push for everything,” Katie said.
“They finally got her in for questioning but only after we persevered. After first denying everything, she admitted stealing the cheques.
“Then we got a letter from the police saying they were not going to charge her, we were absolutely fuming. I complained and we were told it was a mistake, they said they would only not press charges in these circumstances if the family was OK with that.
“We were not OK with that, we were far from OK, we told them all along that we wanted her charged.
“They eventually apologised and charged her.”
The final insult came when they heard that Collinson, 35, had been convicted of fraud and theft charges and was sentenced to 150 hours community service.
“The police said they’d let us know when it was going to court because we wanted to be there but they never did,” said Katie, 43. “The letter from Victim Support did not even tell us the sentence – we had to ring to find out.
“No one seems bothered by the impact on our family after losing our dad, it made everything so much worse.
“Nothing would have happened, the police would not have bothered, if I had not pursued this. It’s been all-consuming since this happened in September.
"The way they’ve handled this has not done anything to enhance our confidence in them dealing with crime, it’s had the opposite effect.”
The charity Hourglass, formerly called Action on Elder Abuse, believes the case is sadly typical of a culture in which older people often experience the “poorest justice outcomes”.
"The 2019 report ‘The Poor Relation’ highlighted the police and Crown Prosecution Service lacked any joint cohesive and focused strategy to deal with older victims of crime," said its director of policy Veronica Gray.
“Older people are often abused because they are in vulnerable scenarios and their needs and experiences must be acknowledged in the outcomes of cases.
“This particular case strikes us as a very lenient sentence for someone who has used a position of power to financially abuse someone in their very last days of life.
"We’d like to see more targeted training for frontline services, from the Police to the NHS, so frontline workers can understand and respond appropriately to cases specifically relating to older people."
Humberside Police insists it puts victims “at the heart of everything we do”.
“Following contact with the family in this case, Humberside Police have undertaken a full review of the associated investigation and outcome,” said a spokesperson.
“This has resulted in Ms Collinson receiving a summons to court to face charges of theft and fraud by false representation. She has since appeared at Hull Magistrates’ Court in relation to the matter.”
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