Caroline* first met her sister Joanna*'s abuser when she was visiting her care home, where she was being treated for dementia. He helped them put a TV up on Joanna's bedroom wall. He seemed, as Caroline puts it, quite pleasant. But her sister's reaction to the worker during another visit worried her.
"One day he walked past while we were sitting in the dining room and my sister's eyes narrowed and followed him all the way around the room," she said. "She just put her head down and she said, 'Fucking bastard'."
It was not until a year later that the true scale of Teo-Valentin Todorovits's crimes started to come to light after staff discovered a condom in Joanna's room. Joanna is one of the first known victims of Todorovits, a "monster" rapist care worker jailed for 24 years for the rape, sexual assault and abuse of dementia patients across two care homes during a three-year campaign of abuse.
The 22-year-old pleaded guilty to 12 charges - including two of rape, one of voyeurism and several of sexual assault - but only two victims were able to be identified by police, one of whom was Joanna. His shocking crimes, Caroline said, have left Joanna a shell of her former self.
'I just screamed: 'No, no, no"
"She's not here any more," Caroline told The Independent. "There's nothing there. She just sits and screams, balls her hands into claws and starts to tear at her body as if she's trying to get rid of something. The only thing I can do is stroke her arms and her head. She will recognise my voice and calm down and that will happen for about two minutes. But that [screaming] could happen every 10 minutes."
Joanna had been in the care home for a few months when Todorovits began working there in 2020. Not long after he arrived, Caroline received an anonymous phone call, warning that her sister was being abused by a member of staff. She rushed to the care home, where a manager told her that he had pushed her over. She found out little more.
Nearly 12 months later, she received the dreaded phone call outlining more abuse. The call came after Joanna had been sent to hospital to be treated for a UTI. "The manager said to me: 'She's coming back from the hospital and she's fine and she's there's nothing physically wrong with her.' And then I knew what she was going to tell me.
"I started screaming down the phone. I had suspected that something was being hidden and it just sort of came through and [I was] just screaming 'no, no, no' down the phone. Then the following evening I had three police officers round my house."
The condom was found in Joanna's room in March 2021. The care home managers alerted the police to a potential safeguarding incident. However, according to Caroline, a "mistake" by police officers - three of whom are now facing a misconduct investigation - meant the care worker was able to flee the country before coming back to the UK to work at another care home, where he was able to abuse more vulnerable women.
To this day, Caroline doesn't know the full extent of what happened to her sister. But she was told by officers that Todorovits had videoed her sister, as well as taken pictures and would even phone other people when he was assaulting her. "I still go to bed, shut my eyes, and then they are suddenly pinned open and she's in my head. I couldn't protect her - and I'm not the only one," said Caroline.
As the judge sentenced Todorovits to 24 years in prison, Caroline said she felt "elated". "I cannot say in words how grateful I am to the whole [police] team that were there yesterday and my counsellor," she said. "I do know that the [initial] police officers made a mistake, but the police very quickly put that right and they were very upfront about it to me. People make mistakes."
Joanne is now in a home much further away from her sister. "The impact of what's happened, for me, comes after I leave [her] because when I do visit I do whatever she needs or wants or needs comfort for - you know, just try and calm her down," said Caroline. "Once I leave, on the way home, I think about how she was beforehand, before any of this happened. She was quite happy. I was happy, because she was only 10 minutes away.
But now everything has changed and sometimes visits, even for me as much as I love her - are very hard." Joanne, says Caroline, was a "glamorous" and "warm-hearted woman". "She was a character. I remember seeing this vision, walking towards me in an orange dress, dressed with a sort of shimmer in it in the material, all dolled up, four-inch high heels, not realising that I was looking at my sister," she said.
The system needs to change
Beyond the horrific abuse faced by her sister, Caroline has called for a change in the care system. She said the home where Joanne was assaulted was a "cruel" place which put her in a "broom cupboard"-like room. "She had one blanket and a sheet and a bed that was about nine inches above the floor," she said. "The whole system as we have it needs to be looked at seriously. It won't be because there is no money for anybody to do it."
The local authority said it has launched a safeguarding adults review into the case. Police said in a statement after the sentencing: "Following potential issues identified in the early stages of the investigation into Todorovits's actions, we subsequently took a decision to refer ourselves to the Independent Office for Police Conduct [IOPC]. At this stage, that investigation sits with the IOPC, with whom we remain in close contact.
"Since that time, a thorough police investigation has taken place, which identified the scale of Todorovits's offending and has ultimately brought him to justice and a significant sentence handed down. Indeed, the judge has seen fit to commend the officers involved in that investigation."
*Caroline and Joanna's names have been changed for legal reasons