Elder Abuse: America's Dirty Secret

As an attorney I have spent decades representing elderly men and women who have endured unspeakable abuse and neglect in nursing homes. Often, these conditions were so reprehensible and so degrading that – were they unearthed at daycare centers or even federal penitentiaries – members of Congress and the media would be crusading for reform. The AAJ’s report is rife with illustrations: A nursing home resident whose leg was amputated after becoming infested with maggots; an Alzheimer’s patient who died trapped in a freezer; a Florida nursing home resident who suffered from multiple falls, severe weight loss, multiple pressure sores, infections, dehydration, and eventually death by starvation; patients at a home in Illinois who were given antipsychotic drug injections “assembly-line style” as a means of “chemical restraint;” and an elderly nursing home resident who was sexually assaulted in the middle of the night at the hands of an orderly who was an ex-con.

If something major doesn’t change, and change soon, this is the kind of fate that awaits multitudes of Americans expected to join the ranks of the institutionalized elderly in the coming decades.

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Elder Abuse: America's Dirty Secret