A toxic friend

Cardiffk

I was hoping that someone might have some advice for me. My MIL has moderate to severe dementia and is in MC. Last year we brought her up from FL to her home state to live near us as we were aware that her condition was deteriorating. When she lived in FL she had a housemate who helped to take care of her. One of the reasons we brought her back home was that we discovered that the housemate was not living up to his end of the deal. His idea of getting her food was to take her to a restaurant 2x a day with her paying for much of it. He wasn''t keeping up on making sure she got her meds and when my SIL went to get her it was discovered that she had a raging infection in her foot that the Housemate had not attended to and had neglected to get her antibiotics that had been prescribed. This person had lived with my MIL for over 10 years rent free. Also, he seems to have made quite a good life for himself by living with other older women and "taking care of them" until they passed away. He has done this at least 3 other times to our knowledge. And let me be clear this was NOT a romantic relationship between them.

Now to the problem. It seems like whenever he speaks to her on the phone which can be multiple time a day she always ends up being upset and angry at us, her family. She has let it slip multiple times that he has said that we "locked her up" in the MC. There have been insinuations that we have stolen from her. And he is constantly telling her that if it wasn''t for us she could still be living with him in FL. THis is causing so much anger in her that we sometimes can''t even answer the phone anymore because she just cries and sometimes gets verbally abusive towards us. We hesitate calling him directly and talking to him about this because we are sure that 1- he will lie to us and tell us he really isn''t telling her these things and 2- he will then tell her that we are mad at him and trying to keep him away from her. We have gone so far as to block him from making calls to her but she can still call him so that we could at least try to monitor when she talked to him and if her moods could be traced back to him. However he has already found a way around this by using other peoples phones.

We need to do something about this but we also don''t want to break her heart because she cant talk to her "best friend" anymore. Should we confront him then threaten to block him completely if things don''t change? Or do we just block him first then deal with the emotional fall out when she can''t talk to him anymore? Has anyone ever dealt with anything this bizarre before?
Thanks

Stuck in the middle

I would block him completely, right now.  I see no reason to say anything to a con man/leech.  You can't appeal to his better nature because he has none.

The emotional fallout from her losing her manipulator can't be worse than she is experiencing now.

SusanB-dil

Can you get her a phone that you can monitor?  Like a parent/child phone where you program what calls can be made and received.  My mother had a 'friend' like that and every time she would speak with her, my brother would bear the brunt of the ensuing anger-temper. The difference was that the person would not use other phones to call, though.  Your MIL might not like it, but hopefully would get used to it.  Just a thought to lessen her anger - after this person is effectively blocked and she cannot call him, maybe if you called starting with a few times a day and then less and less to an acceptable level for you.  Perhaps with a fresh phone, he wouldn't have the number any longer, either.   

If she doesn't know his phone number by heart, another phone might work - could say that 'something happened' to her 'old' phone. If he doesn't know exactly where she is placed, he would not be able to call the facility, either.  (but still thinking a parent/child phone might work better - and with a more immediate result.)

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mommyandme (m&m)

Do you have POAs in place? Maybe you could get a restraining order so he cannot call anymore.  That sounds harsh and I don’t advocate using the legal system incorrectly but sounds like it could be appropriate if any abuse happened, (not caring for her wounds, financial abuse?) 

I would remove any possible form of communication between them.  Don’t discuss it with her any longer.  

So hard, I’m so sorry.