Front Burner - A fake nurse’s long history of impersonation

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

For a year, a 49-year-old woman in B.C. posed as a nurse at a Vancouver hospital, even assisting in gynecological surgeries, despite not actually being a nurse. Brigitte Cleroux has since been criminally charged, but it turns out she has a long history of impersonations dating back decades and spanning multiple provinces. Now, former patients are left with serious questions about the care they received, and how she was able to even get the job in the first place. Today, CBC Vancouver’s Bethany Lindsay tells us more about those patients, and CBC Ottawa’s Shaamani Yogaretnam explains Cleroux’s decades of impersonations.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi everybody, Jamie here. Before we start today's show, I was hoping that I could take a few moments of your time. If you are a regular listener of this podcast, you may have noticed that I've been away for the last little while. You may also remember that last year I had a baby boy. He is now 19 months old and the total light of my life. Shortly after I had him though,

total light of my life. Shortly after I had him though, I started to get really awful anxiety. I was really worried I was doing all the wrong things as a new mom. Sometimes it was about COVID, but it was also about all kinds of other things. I felt really sad too. I imagine that this all wasn't helped by a pandemic. My husband and I were isolated from so many of the people we care about as we all were. And instead of stopping and checking in on myself, I tried to push through it. I thought that it was something that I just needed to ride out, that I needed to be tougher. You can probably see where this is going. That strategy did not work for me. And things really came to a head this fall. The anxiety became debilitating. I felt so burnt out, so incredibly depressed. out so incredibly depressed and I needed to take some time off work and get some help.

I now know that for all those months I was struggling with postpartum depression. I'd obviously heard about it, but I didn't realize or understand that it was happening to me. Maybe some of you out there can relate to that. It's still hard for me to explain exactly what it felt like. The best I can say is that on the worst days, it really did feel like the sky was falling and that it was never going to stop. I have thought a lot about whether I wanted to share this. It's obviously really personal. And once it's out there, well, I can't take it back. But I also believe that the way to normalize mental health issues is to talk about them. And I also wanted to share this because the reason that I actually got the help that I needed, and I'm feeling so much better today, is because of a very wonderful friend of mine,

a colleague here at the CBC, actually, who saw that I was struggling and shared her own story with me. So I just want to say, especially with the holidays coming up and this pandemic still dragging on and frankly, dragging everyone down, that if you are really struggling out there, that you are not alone and that it can and it does get better. I just really want to thank everyone on this show. They're incredible people for their unwavering support and to Angela for stepping in and doing such an incredible job.

She'll be with us a little bit more. I'm going to be part-time until the new year. It does feel really great to be back though. Okay, on to the program. Two years ago, Sasha Timkew from Burnaby, B.C. did what a lot of women do. She went to the doctor to see if she could get pregnant. I am finishing R&P school right now. I'm in my last semester. I went to a fertility clinic about two years ago to just have an ultrasound of my ovaries and see where I was at in terms of being at the time 38 and now 40, what things would look like,

how I can plan to have children after I finish school at the age of 40. That's when doctors found Apollo and told her she'd have to get it removed. So on December 15, 2020, she went to BC Women's Hospital for what is normally a fairly routine procedure. I was in the little kind of waiting room where you have chairs and it's separated by curtain and a nurse comes up and talks to you. And I was chatty because I was nervous. And I was like, sorry, I chat a lot when I get nervous. And this is kind of funny, but she goes, oh, don't worry. Like, there's somebody that's going to be in the room with you that's really chatty.

So you've got nothing on her. And I'm like, okay. That nurse was Brigitte Cleroux, And I knew right away what that woman was talking about, and she was kind of bossing other people around. That nurse was Brigitte Cleroux, this imposing woman with jet black hair and big eyelashes. Cleroux wheeled Sasha into the operating room. And I got on the table, and, you know, I had my legs in stirrups, and I was disrobed from the waist down, legs wide open, and I'm pretty nervous. And I'm just comforting myself, being like, okay, like these are professionals. Immediately, something was off. And right away, there's tons of pain.

I had a line in at the time, and I'm supposed to be getting painkiller but there's pain and I'm kind of like can breathe through this like I've done breath work through other stuff but nothing was helping and it got to the point where I was like kind of squirming away from the surgeon and I remember my legs were just shaking. There was so much pain. Well, it turns out the nurse who was supposed to be helping Sasha was not a nurse at all. Today, we're talking to two journalists who have uncovered a lot more about Brigitte Clareau and her long history of deceit. CBC Vancouver's Bethany Lindsay and CBC Ottawa's Shamini Yogaretnam. Hi, Bethany. Hi, Shamini. Thank you guys both so much for making the time.

Hi, Jamie. Hi, Jamie. So I want to start with you, Bethany. We just heard a little bit from Sasha, one of the women you spoke to who encountered this fake nurse while she was a patient at BC Women's Hospital. And she went in for what was considered a pretty routine procedure. And we just heard her talk about how painful it was. And what does she think about what happened to her now? Well, the surgery was actually so painful that the surgeon ended up stopping it, couldn't complete it. And, you know, she was kind of embarrassed at the time

about that having to happen. But she spent most of a year thinking that this was entirely normal, that this procedure is always so painful for women. And she actually kind of warned people away from it. And it was only after her twin sister had the same procedure, and it was almost completely painless, that Sasha realized there was something seriously wrong with what happened. I had no idea that my experience wasn't normal and that's what's so scary about this whole thing is that not only was I like leg spread up as vulnerable as you can be as a woman with strangers up in there. And just to be clear, does Sasha think that this woman, Brigitte Clareau, might have had a role in the fact that her surgery was so painful? Well, she has questions for sure, because Brigitte Clareau was giving her pain medication during the surgery. And she was

the person who, when Sasha said, I'm in a lot of pain right now, was supposed to be giving her more pain medication. And now she wonders whether she was getting pain medication, whether something was going wrong with the pain medication. It's just a lot of unanswered questions. It's just a lot of unanswered questions. I know she's not the only person that's come forward. Can you tell me about Paige Morris? Yes.

So Paige Morris is 25 years old. And this past May, she had a surgical abortion at BC Women's Hospital. And Clarue assisted with that as well. Now, she was under general anesthetic at this time. So she doesn't actually know what this person's role was in her surgery, but she does remember her distinctly before going under. She said she was very rude, very condescending, hostile with her coworkers. So this isn't somebody who blends into the background. Okay. I understand that she did have some complications after her surgery, right? Yeah, she did. She had to go back to the hospital actually a couple of times because of these complications from her abortion. And now she has no way of knowing whether that has anything to do with Clareau.

But again, she can't help but wonder whether it did since there was an unlicensed, untrained person providing her care during a surgery. I can't grasp it. Like it's so violating, you know, like I just, I can't wrap my head around how something like that could happen here. I never thought. You know, Bethany, it strikes me that these are such intimate procedures that these women both, both went through. Yeah. And that's something they both mentioned. These are procedures that are happening in the most intimate parts of your body. And they're also things having to do with reproductive health are things that we don't often talk about publicly. And the sense of violation that they felt that somebody who isn't a professional, who isn't properly trained, was in the room with them, it's just hard to grasp. And the other thing I wanted to say about that is that

Sasha Timkew has said, because this was such an intimate surgery, because it's something that women don't often talk about publicly, you know, she was really hesitant to complain about the treatment she received. And she wonders if a lot of other women didn't feel the same way. They felt maybe embarrassed and they wonder if that's why she got away with it. So these questions that these women and I'm sure many other people have, how did they find out in the first place that this nurse who cared for them when they were patients was in fact not actually a nurse at all? Yeah, so BC Women's Hospital has been sending letters to all of the patients who were treated

by Clareau and they've been arriving over the last week, they're nearly identical. And they say, we're just writing to let you know that someone who provided you perioperative nursing care during your surgery wasn't actually licensed as a nurse. It also says no action is required from you. And Vancouver police are conducting an investigation. The thing that stands out the most aside from the being there itself was the letter itself. I felt like was so insufficient for the gravity of the situation. They made it seem like it really was just not a big deal. And like, they're just going to do what they can. And, you know, I had to kind of read it a couple of times to be like, well, no, like,

this is, this is not okay. Like this is so, so much bigger than what they're making it out to seem. And, um, let me bring you in here because I know that you did a lot of digging into this woman's past, into Clarue's past. And we know that this isn't the first time she's actually pulled something like this, right? It's a pattern. And what have you learned about this woman? Well, Jamie, what we know is, you know, she's essentially been a con woman who's been operating for the past 30 years, really. con woman who's been operating for the past 30 years, really. Her crimes date back to 1991, which is the first time that we see her being charged at just 19 years old with these crimes of dishonesty that would then later become a pattern in her life, right? Fraud, forgery, right? Fraud, forgery, impersonating another person. And it really kicked off what are repeated efforts to do the same kind of thing. In 2005, she got a nursing job in a small Ontario

city. In 2006, she was already sentenced to prison for lying to get that employment and was ordered to pay $60,000 in a fine for working at a hospital without proper credentials. So she had pretended to be a nurse before? Yeah, so she had pretended to be a nurse, which I think is the is the more common job that she pretended to do. And what I found is that three different provinces had issued alerts about Brigitte Clareau's behavior. Huh. Wow. And just before we keep going with that, so you said that this was one of the more common jobs that she pretended to do. Did she pretend to be other things, do other jobs?

Indeed, she did. And this is the part that's kind of wild. She pretended to be an elementary school teacher in Calgary. She pretended to be former roommates, assuming their identities in legal documents. She pretended to be a lot of people that she could somehow benefit from. Right. And so Shamani, how does she pretend to be a nurse, right? But it was never convincing. People that previously worked with her while she was lying, you know, told me that the simplest things like taking blood, she just seemed so unsure of it, or she did it in a way that any nurse would be concerned about. But she was also incredibly intelligent and people that have spoken to her and worked with her called her a gifted talker. Someone who was personable but I think above all else really convincing. on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

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I guess especially with these warnings that were out there. How does she even get past HR? And this is a really good question, Jamie, because what we know from all of the places that she's pretended to be other people is that she has used over 30 years, you know, upwards of a dozen aliases. She's used the identities of other people, former friends, former roommates, people with real credentials in the fields that she's attempted to kind of impersonate them and pass herself off as them. And, you know, it's kind of a two way street, because not only is she trying to be somebody that she's not, you know, these colleges, when they've issued these alerts about people who are fraudulently impersonating the profession, they've also reminded employers,

hey, it's up to you to do the background checks. It's up to you to find out if this person whom you're offering a job to is actually qualified to do the job that they're applying for. So it's probably a bit of both, right? That we've got a motivated person who is not doing the right thing, but we've also got systems that are not really doing right by the people they're supposed to protect. Right. You know, and on top of these warnings, I understand like she was written about in 2010, right? Like there was an article about this woman in the Ottawa Citizen. She was. So in 2010, my former colleagues at the Ottawa Citizen, along with reporters at the Calgary Herald newspaper, did a kind of a joint investigation on her.

That was at the time when those offenses in Ontario and in Alberta were starting to come to light for the first time. And some of the people that they interviewed as part of that investigation, which, you know, at this point is 11 years ago, they said this was a way of life for her. This wasn't one-off behavior. And this is just what she did. Bethany, I know there's no indication at this point.

I understand how she was caught. But is there any clarity at all around the most current investigation? So since she's been caught again, have charges been laid against this woman? Yeah, so she's facing charges in both BC and Ontario. In Vancouver, she's been charged with fraud over $5,000 and personation with intent. And Vancouver police are saying that she used the name of a real nurse to work at BC Women's Hospital from June 2020 to June 2021. And as Shamani has reported, she was also charged in Ottawa this summer for doing similar things at a medical clinic and a dental clinic there. Her charges there are a bit more related to violent crimes as well. So they also include assault with a weapon and criminal negligence causing bodily harm, allegedly for giving

medication and injections to patients without having any certification to do so. And have we heard anything from the hospital in BC about, you know, how this happened and what they were doing about it so that it might not happen again? Well, that's really the biggest question that all of these women have who were treated by Cliro. We haven't heard anything about how it was allowed to happen or how it was discovered. All these women know is that it happened. And that's one of the most frustrating things for them. It seems like somebody with such a long history of doing things like this would be easier to catch before she treats patients. And so what we're hearing from the health authority that runs the hospital is almost nothing. And the health minister here in BC has said there's going to be a thorough review, but these patients

just have, they're perplexed, basically. And, you know, obviously you said she did this for a whole year. So I would imagine that she would have interacted with a lot of people. Have you heard from other former patients since you wrote about this case, since this case has become more public? Yeah, yeah. I get emails from patients every day, multiple emails. I've probably heard from more than a dozen women now. And their stories are all very similar. Most of them remember Clarue distinctly as somebody who seemed very unprofessional. There are other women who

have said their procedure was a bit unusually painful. So that raises some real questions. And most of them are angry and just confused because they've had so little information from the health authority about what role Cluru played in their surgery, about, again, how this was allowed to happen. And, you know, it's just been a really hard week for a lot of them. Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine that this is maybe like one of the last things that you would think could happen when you walk into a hospital. Thank you. Thank you both, Bethany, Shamani.

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having us. All right, so that is all for today. If you are a fan of this show, please consider leaving a rating or a review on your podcast app of choice. It really helps new listeners to find us. We can also be found on Twitter at FrontBurnerCBC. I'm Jamie Poisson, and thanks so much for listening.