A former caregiver at a South Barrington memory care facility is facing criminal charges after police say she filmed nude and partially undressed dementia residents, including a 73-year-old man with Parkinson's disease, and shared the footage with coworkers on Snapchat. Madison Russo, 25, of Bartlett, was charged with unauthorized videotaping and unauthorized dissemination of a person at their residence without permission, stemming from videos investigators say were recorded at Encore Memory Care between January and July.
According to the Chicago Tribune, which first reported the case, the facility's director notified South Barrington police on June 25 after an Encore employee alerted the director to what was happening. Police say facility employees had been sharing the images among a group via Snapchat, and that at least three other residents beyond Bernard “Skip” Fisher II were videotaped — one in the shower while naked, one on the toilet, and another in her underpants in front of her wheelchair, according to the police report cited by the Tribune.
Investigators say Russo told them in the police report that a resident gave her a hard time during showers and that she wanted to show other caregivers what she dealt with. Encore Memory Care has since terminated six employees in connection with the matter, the Tribune reported. Russo's arraignment was scheduled for Tuesday.
A Husband's Placement Turns Into a Family's Nightmare
Fisher entered Encore Memory Care in 2023 after becoming dependent on care there; his wife, Kristen Fisher, 73, had been injured while caring for him herself and could no longer manage on her own, the Tribune reported. The family was told that Bernard Fisher and other residents had been videotaped naked at the home. Kristen Fisher told the paper she was completely shocked and could not believe what she was hearing when she learned of the allegations, and said she was exploring legal options against Encore.
Kristen Fisher called for policies prohibiting nursing-home and memory-care workers from using phones in patient rooms and showers and on social media, and said workers should not be allowed to have cellphones while working and should have closer supervision, according to the Tribune's report.
South Barrington Police Chief Michael Garrison said the incident was isolated and that a detective solved it quickly, though he said the investigation continued. Garrison said he was not aware of other victims beyond those identified in the police report.
Attorney Says Pattern Is a Recognized Form of Elder Abuse
Jaime Koziol Delaney, a partner at Levin & Perconti, said cases like this one are a documented and recurring form of elder abuse, and that patients with dementia can be particularly vulnerable to degrading treatment of this kind. She said she hoped any other victims would come forward.
The allegations echo a broader pattern documented well beyond South Barrington. An October 2025 national report funded by the Colorado State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, cited by LeadingAge, identified 100 separate incidents between 2017 and 2025 in which care facility staff nationwide posted unauthorized, demeaning photos or videos of 147 residents on social media — with 88% of those victims suffering from cognitive impairment such as dementia. A 2015 investigation by ProPublica had earlier documented 35 such instances across the country, at least 16 of them involving Snapchat specifically, reporting that sparked a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry in 2016 into enforcement against healthcare workers who share degrading resident imagery online.
Federal regulators have long treated this conduct as abuse rather than a mere policy violation. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a policy memorandum in August 2016 instructing state survey agencies to treat unauthorized staff photo and video recordings of residents as forms of mental abuse and severe privacy violations subject to regulatory penalties, per LeadingAge's report.
Illinois Felony Statute and a Recent Local Precedent
Under Illinois law, knowingly recording or transmitting live video of another person inside their residence without consent constitutes unauthorized videotaping, prosecuted as a Class 4 felony when the recording occurs in private living quarters. The state has handled similar cases harshly in the past: in May 2025, a former medical resident in Peoria was sentenced to five years in the Illinois Department of Corrections after pleading guilty to felony unauthorized videotaping for covertly recording individuals in a healthcare setting without consent, according to Peoria Public Radio WCBU.
Illinois has also moved to expand residents' own ability to guard against this kind of abuse. The state's Authorized Electronic Monitoring in Long-Term Care Facilities Act took effect in January 2016, allowing residents or their guardians to install monitoring cameras at their own expense to deter abuse and gather court-admissible evidence, according to Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates. In June 2026, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed House Bill 4517, extending that camera-installation right to assisted living and shared housing residents beginning January 1, 2027, per a summary from the Illinois Health Care Association.
Encore Memory Care at South Barrington operates as a 46-bed specialized assisted living facility licensed by the Illinois Department of Public Health, part of the regional Encore Senior Living network that also includes dementia care locations in Bolingbrook and Crystal Lake, according to A Place for Mom. State inspection records reviewed by Mirador Living show the facility has been the subject of four past inspection reports, including one Type A citation issued before this year — a designation that represents a serious compliance violation under Illinois care facility regulations.
