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The Sad Case of Elder Abuse
By Jonathan Friedman, The Malibu Times
February 11, 2004
A terrible, yet underreported crime, elder abuse can be prevented if friends and loved ones look for the warning signs.
Elder abuse is a more severe problem than most of us would probably like to think. Brad Lusk from Home Instead Senior Care, an international care center for older people, says there are anywhere between 3 million to 5 million cases of elder abuse a year in the United States. But it would be impossible to determine an exact number because it is estimated about 60 percent of all cases are not reported for a variety of reasons, including the shame or guilt felt by the victims.
Elder abuse takes many forms, including physical, sexual, financial and emotional. According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, the most common perpetrators of the crime are family members, either spouses or adult children. In cases of financial abuse, it often occurs when the person who was supposed to be trusted with the victim's money acts in a way that is anything but trustworthy.
Michelle Norwood, who works for the Elder Abuse Unit of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office's Victim-Witness Assistance Program, spoke last week at the Malibu Senior Center about one such case. In this situation, an older son spent all the life savings of his father, $30,000, while the parent was in the hospital for a year. The son also took out two credit cards in the father's name, charging $10,000 on each.
After realizing he had been the victim of the crime, the older man called Norwood. When the son was later arrested, the father pleaded for him not to go to prison, despite having earlier alleged that his son tried to smother him to death with a pillow when he confronted him about the situation. Although the son ended up receiving probation and was forced to pay back his father all of the money he owed him, Norwood said the parent not wanting the child to be punished is not a rare occurrence.
"They are so used to having been a parent for so long," she said.
Scott P. Schomer, an attorney who specializes in elder abuse cases, says it can be prevented or halted if those close to the victim look for the warning signs. He said they include noticeable change in grooming or appearance, limited contact with family members, unanswered messages or correspondences and reliance on helpful strangers.
"When there is suddenly a younger man helping out the senior and he's [the younger man] writing out all the checks, a friend or a neighbor should ask, 'Why is this happening?'" said Schomer, who also spoke at the seminar.
Schomer said there are a variety of steps seniors and their friends and family can take to prevent older people from being taken advantage of financially, especially in situations in which the person's mental capacity has lessened. He said seniors should try to receive direct deposit checks, never sign blank checks, never leave valuables in plain view, never sign something they do not understand, never reveal an ATM PIN code, never purchase anything from telemarketers, always duplicate bank statements and consider transferring assets to a trust and appointing a trustee.
Trusted family members and friends, Schomer said, should take more of an active involvement in the older person's life and consider setting up a power of attorney or a conservatorship. A power of attorney is when a person is placed in control of a person's assets. Schomer said this could be advantageous because it places a trusted person in control, lessening the chances of the senior falling victim to fraud. However, he said a disadvantage is the senior still has title to the assets, and can make transfers independent of the power of attorney. Worse, in some cases the person selected to take the power of attorney role could be the one committing the fraud.
A conservatorship is when the court is placed in power of the senior's assets, with a person placed in a supervisory role who has been selected through a screening process. That person has the legal ability to recover wrongfully diverted assets and can take other steps to protect the conservatee. Schomer said this makes fraud all but impossible, but drawbacks include that it is expensive and that court permission must be obtained to do such things as selling property, borrowing money or changing estate plans.
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