Commentary: Isolation of the elderly by manipulative family members must be recognized as a form of elder abuse

(Stephane De Sakutin/Getty-AFP)

By Sandy Baksys

The nation’s ongoing COVID-19 crisis brings a distressing poignancy to the problem of elder abuse. Elders everywhere sadly find themselves in long-term protective isolation from their own families. For those in congregate settings such as nursing homes, both the risk of the coronavirus and the experience of isolation are especially acute.

Yet even in normal times, tens of thousands of elders across our nation are traumatically isolated from their closest family members from the day they lose independence until the day they die.

Such isolation is carried out both in congregate facilities and in private homes, sometimes at the direction of a “rogue” family member who wants to seize power over the elder and his or her assets. It is rank exploitation of our elders in their weakness and old age, no matter who commits it.

The abusers in these situations steal a lot more than power or money when they isolate our aged loved ones. They steal the final chapters of close and lifelong relationships — our last and only chances to be together. 

Tragically, when elder isolation occurs within a family, it can pit some members of the family against others, making it difficult for the elder justice system to distinguish abusers from victims and stop the abuse. 

Why is elder abuse within families the third rail of elder protection in Illinois, even though it constitutes 76% of all elder abuse cases logged by the Illinois Department on Aging’s Adult Protective Services? 

The problem is that here and in so many other states, the law largely doesn’t “see” abusive elder isolation within families. It sees in-family financial abuse, and mainly responds to that by probating wills and estates after an elder has died. 

Traumatic and costly guardianship proceedings likewise put elders’ mental capacity on trial while putting obvious evidence of elder isolation and manipulation on the back burner. But what if all of the legal firepower that today gets channeled into stripping elders of their legal agency and making them wards of the court were channeled into combating elder abuse instead?

Even Adult Protective Services, which handles some 18,000 cases annually, puts the burden on elders. In order for caseworkers to take any action, the dependent elder must speak up against the very person who has them isolated. This helps explain why only 40% of the elder abuse reports APS receives are confirmed, let alone remedied in any way. 

Law enforcement, for its part, depends on APS to refer cases — and on abused elders or their family members to cooperate in cases that could result in sending another family member to jail. What most family members really want is not to send anyone to jail, but simply for the abusive behavior to stop. 

For all these reasons and more, Illinois’ Elder Abuse Task Force, appointed last summer by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and co-chaired by Sen. Rachelle Crowe, D-Glen Carbon, and Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, must put elder isolation at the top of its agenda. 

This agenda must be driven by the fact that elders only need be functionally dependent — not mentally incompetent — in order to be vulnerable to traumatic isolation and manipulation by a family member who betrays their trust. The system must stop insisting on evidence of severe suffering or death before it will act. And it must stop pursuing guardianship as its principal approach to elder abuse.

Right now, even before the Elder Abuse Task Force delivers its recommendations to the governor, every Illinois adult deserves to know we will have the right to the same close family relationships after we lose independence that we enjoyed before losing it. Elder isolation is elder abuse.

Full Article & Source:
Commentary: Isolation of the elderly by manipulative family members must be recognized as a form of elder abuse