Posts Tagged ‘Dignity Memorial’
Massachusetts Dignity Memorial Funeral Provider Tries To Conceal Burying Two Bodies In Wrong Cemeteries
Another Scandal For SCI (NYSE:SCI)
Brookline, Massachusetts
A state disciplinary board has ordered a Brookline funeral home to explain how they mixed up the burials of two bodies in August, burying one woman in the wrong grave, digging her up in time for her actual funeral and then allegedly failing to tell one family about the mistakes. The Stanetsky Chapel is owned by Houston-based Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) and is a Dignity Memorial Provider.
The employees under investigation are company manager Kim Perry, embalmers and funeral directors Paul Glennon and Bruce Schlossberg, and apprentice embalmer Jane Salk.
Service Corporation International owns 1800 funeral homes nationwide. Company spokeswoman Lisa Marshall, speaking on behalf of the company and the four employees, said SCI is cooperating with the board. She also said that corporate policy bans her from discussing individual cases, but that she could speak in generic terms about the company’s procedures.
“We work very, very hard to ensure that mistakes don’t happen. We have very good policies, we have good training in place,” Marshall said. “We work with our employees to prevent mistakes. But, occasionally, a mistake happens. When that happens, our policy is to work with the families.”
However, family members are pointing out that they were not notified and that the funeral home attempted to conceal the “mistake.”
Northern Virginia Dignity Memorial Funeral Home Fined For Corpse Abuse
National Funeral Home - A Dignity Memorial Provider Owned By Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI)
A Northern Virginia funeral home that acts as a regional embalming facility for Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) and also a Dignity Memorial firm has been penalized by the state for corpse abuse violations that include improperly storing bodies in the facility’s garage and hallways.
National Funeral Home and the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers signed a consent order this week in which the Falls Church facility agreed to two years of probation, a $50,000 fine and six unannounced inspections each year. A two-year suspension was imposed but immediately stayed. It could take effect if the funeral home is found to have any violations in the next two years.
A Washington Post article in April 2009 detailed allegations that bodies had been left on hazardous-materials boxes and makeshift gurneys; deceased veterans were placed on garage racks for months while awaiting burial at Arlington National Cemetery; and some bodies were left exposed and leaking fluids.
Photographs taken in the funeral home documented the alleged abuses, and family members of the deceased said they had no idea that their loved ones’ bodies had been taken to the facility and were not being properly stored in refrigerated areas.
Funeral Consumer Digest 