Law enforcement, social service agencies align to keep elderly safe

By Steven Spearie

In early 2013, Vaughn Henry, a former Springfield financial advisor, took more than $150,000 from a 99-year-old Jerome woman with promises to invest it.

But Henry didn’t follow through on his promise of investing the woman’s money in a slaughterhouse in the Ivory Coast. Instead, Henry transferred the funds to his own accounts in late 2013 and early 2014 and spent the money on personal expenses.

Facing charges of theft exceeding $100,000 and financial exploitation of the elderly, Henry was found guilty and in April 2019 was sentenced to 7 1/2 years behind bars.

Of the 507 intakes Senior Services of Central Illinois/ Adult Protective Services reported for fiscal year 2020, over half of them dealt with financial exploitation of elderly persons.

The newly-formed Sangamon County Senior Support Alliance is an elder abuse prevention that solidifies local law enforcement’s ties with social service agencies, like Senior Services.

“One of the things we were really looking at is how can we better partner?” said Carol Harms, executive director of Senior Services, which serves Logan, Menard and Mason counties, in addition to Sangamon County. “How can we make our community partnerships stronger to build this relationship so we ensure the safety of the seniors?”

The public will get a close-up look at the alliance during a Facebook Live event at 3 p.m. Tuesday. The session will feature Sangamon County State’s Attorney Dan Wright; Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell; Sangamon County Department of Public Health director Gail O’Neill; Springfield Police Chief Kenny Winslow; Area Agency on Aging for Lincolnland volunteer coordinator Jennifer Hopper and Harms.

In addition to financial exploitation, Adult Protective Services (APS) investigates reports of emotional, physical and sexual abuse of persons over 60 in their homes. It also investigates reports for persons 18 to 59 years of age with a documented disability.

Calls come into a hotline, said Carolyn Yuroff, APS department supervisor, from friends, neighbors and family members of elderly persons, and other agencies and medical offices.

Not every case results in APS taking a police report or going to the state’s attorney’s office, Yuroff said. The agency could intervene in some domestic situations by talking to family members or powers of attorney.

“We are a client-driven program,” Yuroff said. “If our clients have competency and the ability to make their own decisions, then we go along with what they say. We’re the advocates of support for them.”

For the fiscal year ending June 30, APS did 183 reports on emotional abuse of seniors in Sangamon County. The reports ranged from seniors being intimidated verbally or a a person talking about them as a burden, Yuroff said.

There were 104 reports of passive neglect for the same period. Yuroff said passive neglect could have meant a caregiver was not bathing the elderly properly, was not taking them to doctors appointments or not keeping the home up.

APS had 45 reports from Logan County last fiscal year, 27 from Mason County and 20 from Menard County. Twenty-two additional cases were transferred to APS because individuals moved into the four-region area.

Financial exploitation has been the most reported allegation over the last three years, Yuroff said. That could include the theft of property or someone using senior’s debit or credit card to make personal purchases. It could also be the result of questionable changes to a person’s will or questionable asset or property transfers.

“Sometimes it’s cut-and-dried because money can be tracked through bank accounts or ATM withdrawals,” Yuroff added. “With financial exploitation, there’s so many people who could come in and fly under the radar, all kinds of different ways people could access that money. In that capacity, it doesn’t surprise me much that financial exploitation is the number one issue.

“People are crafty in getting access to money. However, I think there’s a lot that still goes undocumented for financial exploitation. There are a lot of cases we don’t know about that are huge.”

For a number of reasons, Wright said, elderly individuals may not always be able to protect themselves from victimization.

“Older members of our community too often become targets for those who would take advantage of the vulnerable,” Wright said. “This multi-disciplinary initiative will help us prevent elder abuse and coordinate resources to support early reporting, investigation and prosecution.”

The alliance is based upon the “Triad” concept which began in 1988 when the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriff’s Association convened resources.

Closer to home, Wright said Madison County has had a “Triad” model in place for several years with nearly 30 stakeholder service providers.

To view the event, go to: https://www.facebook.com/SangamonCountyGov.

To report suspected abuse, exploitation or neglect of an older person, call the statewide, 24-hour Adult Protective Services hotline at 1-866-800-1409.

Full Article & Source:
Law enforcement, social service agencies align to keep elderly safe

Audit: State failing elderly victims of abuse, neglect

By Brad Schrade

A state audit identified damning new evidence that Georgia’s system to protect seniors and vulnerable adults from abuse, neglect and exploitation is failing and the breakdowns are causing additional harm.

Among the significant gaps cited in Friday’s report by State Auditor Greg S. Griffin on Georgia’s Adult Protective Services system was that investigators are taking too long to respond to urgent cases, such as when the elderly were going hungry or were sexually abused. One year, some 500 vulnerable adults facing serious situations waited three days or more before an investigator arrived. APS employees also were rejecting reports that should have been investigated, the audit found.

The system failures leave thousands of elderly and disabled adults at risk. The report says one in 10 older Georgians may be victims of abuse, neglect or exploitation during their lifetimes.

Failures of law enforcement to communicate with APS play prominently in the breakdowns, the audit found.

Multiple law enforcement personnel the auditors interviewed indicated they don’t report all cases of abuse, neglect or exploitation to APS, despite statutory requirements to do so.

The audit noted that law enforcement officers “are hesitant to report cases that involve certain types of victims or abuse.” Officers said they prefer to handle cases themselves because of negative experience with APS or a belief that APS is overworked and can’t handle all the cases reported.

And nearly half of law enforcement officials surveyed in Georgia and more than half of district attorneys surveyed didn’t have a firm grasp on Adult Protective Services’ critical role in helping victims.

Reporting is haphazard, depending on what county the victim lives in, the audit indicates. Cobb and Gwinnett, for example, have about the same number of vulnerable adults. But in fiscal 2018, Cobb reported 50 percent more cases to APS. Law enforcement in the two counties had an even larger disparity.

In 29 counties across Georgia there were no reports from law enforcement, and another 24 had just one report for 2018.

“If reports are not made, victims cannot obtain potentially necessary services and may be at continued risk for future occurrences of abuse, neglect, or exploitation,” the report concludes.

The audit was also critical of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. It notes that after the General Assembly approved funding in fiscal year 2016 to hire eight agents to focus on elder abuse, GBI didn’t use the funds to hire the allotted additional agents. Instead, it trained an agent in each of its 15 regions to be a resource on elder abuse. The audit questioned how effective the agency has been in addressing elder abuse, although the agency in its response said it had increased its caseload.

The audit also took aim at the way APS manages calls for help. The office only accepts calls from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. That can lead to delays for reports that come in at night and on weekends, when the agency’s website in the only way to report a call.

Auditors also found the APS lacks any systematic way to analyze its work and ensure the decisions on cases are consistent and appropriate. As a result, the agency may be rejecting cases that warrant investigation. In FY 2018, 6,300 cases were rejected and 41 percent of those had no documented reason in the case file for why the decision was made.

About 40% of cases alleging sexual abuse were classified as standard cases, despite an APS policy that such allegations should be designated as priority.

The breakdowns point to the need for significant training and awareness across Georgia’s system.

The Department of Human Services, which oversees APS across the state, generally agreed with the report’s findings. It noted that it has expanded training and outreach to law enforcement and other mandated reporters through its At-Risk Adult Crime Tactics training program that has educated more than 3,000 front-line workers across the state on how to recognize and report abuse. It also noted that it believes policies about investigator response to categorizing reports as standard or priority are confusing and need review.

It did not agree with the recommendation to change its business hours, nor with the recommendation that it lacks a process to ensure decisions are appropriate.

While APS investigates abuse, neglect and exploitation and connects victims with services in the community, it is not the only state agency tasked with protecting seniors from abuse and neglect.

The agency is not responsible for investigating reports of abuse and neglect in state-licensed facilities.

But the audit mirrors similar problems identified by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in its recent investigation of assisted living and personal care homes. The AJC found that the Department of Community Health, which is responsible for investigating cases in state-licensed homes, had gaps in its oversight. The AJC also found significant problems with the way police and regulators communicate, which led to few crimes ever being prosecuted.

Full Article & Source:
Audit: State failing elderly victims of abuse, neglect

Determining incapacity requires assessing executive function

By Sandra Reed

Adult Protective Services (APS) investigator Darlene B., summoned by a call from a concerned neighbor to Ellen P.’s residence, discovered a pile of trash outside the front door. Inside the home, Darlene noted disconnected electricity, no running water and the overwhelming smell of urine and feces.

Ellen denied she lacked power and insisted the mess was temporary because she was hunting for a lost bill. Asked what APS could do to help her, Ellen claimed the only thing she needed was a limb removed from a tree in her yard. Despite these illogical disclosures, Ellen’s memory and orientation seemed to be intact. How can both family and professionals determine whether Ellen is incapacitated? How can they determine the services needed?

Under Texas law, an incapacitated person is an adult who, because of a physical or mental condition, is substantially unable to provide food, clothing, or shelter for himself or herself, to care for the individual’s own physical health, or to manage the individual’s own financial affairs.

Fortunately for Darlene, her APS contracts with the University of Texas Health Science Center of San Antonio Psychiatric Services division, to make assessments of individuals exhibiting impairments similar to Ellen’s. Darlene requested a comprehensive evaluation of Ellen’s mental capacity. Central to that evaluation is what mental health professionals call “executive function.”

Although an individual may be able to recite what they need to do for themselves regarding hygiene, nutrition, medications, and safety, more important is whether they retain the “executive capacity” to follow through with the tasks required for each.

Texas law requires that before a person can be declared incompetent and a guardian appointed, a licensed physician must declare person to be incompetent through a Certificate of Medical Examination (CME). Unfortunately, the CME by the physician is often completed following a far less comprehensive evaluation than the twelve-hour plus battery of testing Darlene was able to secure. Families faced with a situation like Ellen’s should insist upon an evaluation by a psychiatrist trained in assessing geriatric capacity to adequately determine the mental capacity, care and services appropriate for their loved one.

Full Article & Source:
Determining incapacity requires assessing executive function

MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL DANA NESSEL AND GOVERNOR GRETCHEN WHITMER TIED TO INVESTIGATION OF MASSIVE ELDER ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION RING..

LOS ANGELES , CA, USA, August 26, 2019 /EINPresswire.com/

NESSEL FIRES THREE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS EXPOSED IN THE STORY.

Michigan Attorney General
Dana Nessle

An August 23 investigation detailing a massive alleged elder abuse and exploitation ring operating out of a Michigan probate court was published on the same day that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel fired three public administrators, exposed in the story as allegedly exploiting thousands of vulnerable Americans under their guardianship.

High-profile cases such as the ongoing dispute concerning the estate of famed musician Aretha Franklin have been affected.

Franklin's eldest son Clarence is under the guardianship of Michigan attorney Jon Munger who is one of the targets of the probe which uncovered an unsettling number of alleged crimes including abuse, neglect, robbery, and exploitation, often in cases that arguably didn’t merit guardianship in the first place.

In as little as a year, so called "incapacitated wards” are stripped of the entirety of their savings and possessions and rendered completely reliant upon social services and benefits such as Medicaid.

Hammond states that she and her team revealed their findings to Nessel's staff at a March 12, 2019 meeting implicating three of the four public administrators Nessel eventually fired.

On March 25, 2019 Nessel announced the creation of a multi-agency Elder Abuse Task Force. The Task Force presented nine reforms to the guardianship system. Nessel claims the firings were due, in part, to Task Force discoveries.

Hammond says she does not buy it.

"Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and her staff knew this story was coming ever since our March meeting," she says."Her firing of the public administrators we discussed has been a long time coming but doesn't have any effect without criminal investigations. They can still take guardianship cases."

In a forensic review of the Oakland County Probate Court, available to the public for the first time in Michigan history, Mulholland also concludes that criminal investigations into the guardians are warranted.

Hammond's investigation found campaign donations from Nessel to Oakland County Probate County Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan. It also revealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Whitmer by a public relations company owned by Ryan's brother James.

Background:
Every US state still uses form of guardianship Rooted in Medieval English law, at its best, it is designed to protect citizens who are no longer able to protect themselves by declaring them wards of the state. However, increasing reports of abuse cropping up nationwide, has prompted Congressional calls for reform.

But the level of controversy over how guardianship cases are handled in the Detroit-area Oakland County Probate Court has reached such heights, the story reads more like Orwellian fiction than it does a model of the American experience.

Discoveries include the forced separation of families and isolation of the vulnerable; fraudulent petitions for guardianship by Adult Protective Services investigators; massive over-billing; the forced removal of individuals from their homes and the placement of them in nursing facilities or unlicensed group homes with subhuman living conditions; real estate fraud; and missing assets that number in the millions of dollars.

The investigation met with constant challenges, including threats and harassment by Oakland County Sheriff’s officers. A surreal March 12, 2019 four-hour meeting between Hammond's team and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's staff led to a new line of inquiry and discoveries of campaign ties between Nessel, Whitmer and Oakland County Probate Court Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan and her family.
###
ROGER NEAL
NEAL PR
+1 323-366-2796

Click the links below to read the five part series:

The Fortress Part One of Five: Unacknowledged and Unprotected

The Fortress Part Two of Five: Protected in Hell
The Fortress Part Three of Five: Profiting from Protection 
The Fortress Part Five of Five: Protected by Secrecy and Ageism

The Fortress Part Four of Five: The Consequences of Protecting Justice

Tonight on Marti Oakley's TS Radio Network, with co-host Coz Whitten-Skaife: TS Radio: The Aftermath of Predatory Guardianships...Who Really Pays the Price?

7:00 pm CST




Tonight Coz and I will be discussing the aftermath of these predatory guardianships. What happened to the victims? What happened or is happening to the family as a result of collateral damage? Joining us will be Liz and Donna who can speak to the results of being drawn into this corrupt system. Both will give us a close up view of what retaliation looks like and feels like. What actions they took trying to counter the horrific situation that was unfolding in front of them. Also, what happens when APS interferes and becomes a threat?

We will also be updating on the ongoing battle of those subjected to the "Ottholes" in Pennsylvania, along with news on a case in Alaska concerning a large, wealthy family in Anchorage.

So much to talk about...and only an hour this evening! Somebody has cakes to bake!!

This is Coz's new page:   NASGA Wisconsin.

LISTEN to the show LIVE or listen to the archive later

New data show hundreds of thousands of elder abuse cases even with huge reporting gaps

Across the USA, solitude has become a deadly threat for hundreds of thousands of senior citizens living at home.

Last year alone, state adult protective services (APS) intervened in more than 142,000 cases to protect seniors at risk from what is clumsily termed “self-neglect” – seniors who have become too physically or mentally incapacitated to care for themselves and have no other care providers.

Overall, according to new federal data obtained exclusively by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR), state-based APS agencies completed more than 713,000 investigations in fiscal year 2017. The agencies identified nearly 235,000 victims of abuse, including the self-neglect cases. About 10 percent of the total abuse victims counted were under age 50, because some states include abuse or neglect of younger adults with disabilities.

These numbers, part of an initial attempt by the federal government to track  maltreatment of seniors nationwide, understate the scope of the problem, and probably dramatically, according to the agencies compiling the data.

“The elder abuse data is not complete. It’s correct in terms of what’s reported, but there are so many cases that aren’t reported,” said Alice Page, an adult protective services and systems developer with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

“We're way behind in elder abuse reporting than, for example, in child abuse reporting. It's just a different system. There's much more emphasis and resources that have been put into child protective services than there have been into elder abuse or abuse of adults. And so we're sort of playing catch up.”

Elder abuse can range from physical or sexual assault against vulnerable seniors to financial scams to abandonment or neglect by caregivers. The most common threat is self-neglect: an elderly person unable to provide for their own clothing, shelter, food, medication or other basic needs, and having no one to provide care for them. It is a problem that is growing as the population ages.

States have operated under a federal mandate to collect data on child abuse for decades. There is no federal mandate to do the same for elder abuse and neglect.

“We have often referred to elder abuse as a silent issue. For decades people just didn't want to address it at all,” said Edwin Walker, deputy assistant secretary for aging at the Department of Health and Human Services, which is leading the effort to build the national database.

“In the mid-1970s, the federal government got in the business of charting out guidelines and parameters for addressing child abuse. But the federal government never did that for adult protective services or elder abuse.”

During the past several years, the Administration for Community Living has embarked on a voluntary effort with the cooperation of state APS agencies to compile a national database of abuse of seniors living at home. For the most part, abuse in nursing homes or other settings is managed by other agencies and counted separately.

A state-by-state breakdown of the data provided to NECIR shows obvious holes in the data.

For instance, the new totals do not include reports from six states – New Mexico, Oregon, Nevada, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin – for a variety of reasons.

West Virginia, for example, does not collect statewide data on maltreatment of seniors, leaving it to each county to keep their own tally. Wisconsin counts its data on a calendar year, not a fiscal year, and thus has not been able to produce reports for the time period the federal data system uses.

Oregon sent its data in late and was not included in this year’s report. Officials in Nevada and South Dakota said they have been gearing up to provide data for the new federal reporting system called the National Adult Maltreatment Reporting System (NAMRS) and expect to be included in next year’s report.

There are other anomalies – New York reported nearly 40,000 investigations of alleged abuse or maltreatment in 2017, but the federal data indicate New York had zero confirmed victims. That’s because New York’s law does not identify victims; instead the state determines when there is a level of risk to a senior that justifies the state providing services, which it did in 4,700 cases last year, according to the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.

States all have different standards for determining when abuse or neglect has occurred, meaning the same set of evidence may qualify as a “substantiated” abuse or neglect case in one state, but not in another. And the new report acknowledges “no two states reported on all of the same data elements.”

Self-neglect challenges

Still, experts in the field all agree that self-neglect is one of the most challenging issues in elder protection, and it dominates the work of Adult Protective Services units across the country.

“Self-neglect appears to be a very serious problem in our society not a new problem. But it is, as you've been picking up, approximately two thirds of the cases reported by APS nationwide,” said Holly Ramsey-Klawsnik, director of research for the National Adult Protective Services Association.

Ramsey-Klawsnik cautioned that the prevalence of self-neglect in state case files does not mean this is the most common form of adult maltreatment – only that it is the one most readily identified. “Self-neglect cases are so much more visible,” she said.

Neighbors or friends or social workers can tell when a senior’s house has fallen into disrepair, or an older person in the grocery store is unwashed or badly unkempt. It may be harder to tell if a senior has had money stolen from them by a caregiver or if they have been denied access to appropriate medical treatment.

Self-neglect cases also come with the underlying problem that adults are generally assumed to have autonomy and control of their decision-making, so it is hard for a government agency to know when to intervene, particularly if the elderly person rejects assistance.

Some people “just refuse to accept help for whatever reason,” said Cynthia Lien assistant professor of medicine at New York’s Cornell Medical Center. But she says there is also “a large population who just are incapable of giving up a coping mechanisms or repeat behaviors that they've developed over years,” even when those behaviors are no longer working. 

“That manifests in things like an unsafe home environment or hoarding disorders or refusing to see a doctor because maybe they had a bad interaction in the past with a physician and they just don't trust the health system. “

And people have a right to not take proper care of themselves, adds Alice Page from Wisconsin. 

“We talk about the dignity of risk in these cases,” she said. “All of us, there's risk to every decision we make, and some people just choose to live with more risk and accept the consequences. And if you give people choices that involve risk, that enhances dignity.”

But self-neglect is not simply an issue of risk for the senior individual making the poor decisions.

“We do know that self-neglect increases illness, increases emergency room use, increases hospitalization, increases nursing home use, increases hospice use and hastens mortality,” said Ramsey-Klawsnik. “Self-neglect is costing society a lot of money when they have to go to the E.R. and have no money to pay for insurance.” People who self-neglect are also at higher risk of other forms of abuse or exploitation.

Beyond that, a senior in an apartment who is hoarding or failing to take out the trash may be creating an unhealthy environment or a vermin problem for everyone else in the building.

Still, states struggle with how to intervene.

“We can't force somebody who's just making poor choices to do something," said Kathy Morgan of Washington State’s Aging and Long-Term Support Administration. “Although our investigators do a really great job of talking with people and trying to assist them with services or supports that may be able to put in place if they're willing to do that."

State assistance in self-neglect cases can range from referrals to Meals on Wheels or in-home care services to cognitive assessments that could lead to assignment of a guardian if the senior no longer has the capacity to make decisions on their own.

Soaring cases

While the data in NAMRS is full of gaps and aberrations, what is clear is that the number of abuse and neglect cases is soaring nationwide. 

• Washington state had about 19,000 elder abuse reports in 2012 and 49,000 reports in 2017, Morgan said.

• Massachusetts confirmed 7,100 abuse and neglect cases in 2015 and 9,800 in 2017.

• Ohio reported about 16,200 reports of abuse, neglect and exploitation of seniors in 2017, up from about 13,150 in 2014.

• Pennsylvania officials investigated 13,000 abuse reports in fiscal year 2014 and nearly 18,000 in fiscal year 2016. 

Part of this increase is simply a function of better reporting systems in the states, and more public awareness that elder abuse is a problem that should be reported to authorities.

But part is also because there are simply more seniors living in communities around the country, as Americans live longer, remain in their homes longer, and survive ailments that would have been fatal in prior decades.

“I think elder abuse is more prevalent,” Morgan said. “As our population continues to grow and is getting older – our 60 and older population, we’re going to continue to see these types of numbers.”

Full Article & Source:
New data show hundreds of thousands of elder abuse cases even with huge reporting gaps

ETX organizations team up for Elder Financial Exploitation Awareness Month

Click to Watch Video

TYLER, TX (KLTV) - Adult Protective Services in East Texas is teaming up with Meals on Wheels for Elder Financial Exploitation Awareness Month.

"We have a high volume of adult abuse cases being reported on a weekly basis, and this is a safe way for family, friends, or neighbors to protect a loved one, an elderly person in their community,” said Kari Keitzer. Keietzer is the CEO for Meals on Wheels.

The groups are promoting services available to seniors who have been affected by abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation. The organization plans to distribute more than 300 information packets this week.

Full Article & Source:
ETX organizations team up for Elder Financial Exploitation Awareness Month

Home Again - A Guardianship Overturned

THE CASE OF A COURT-APPOINTED GUARDIAN WHO TOOK CONTROL OF AN 80-YEAR-OLD WOMAN’S LIFE HAS TAKEN A TURN.

Jennifer Rodgers walked into a courtroom July 3 and got something that seemed for months to be out of her reach: permission to spend time with her mom.

The court ruling arrived just in time for Rodgers — and friends and family of her mom, 80-year-old Martha (pictured above, at right) — to get together for a Fourth of July cookout.

The breakthrough occurred after Martha’s legal guardianship and conservatorship transferred from Leelanau County to Grand Traverse County. Some fresh sets of eyes noted problems that had occurred in Martha’s case, which had languished as court-appointed guardian Jill Case took almost complete control over Martha’s life.

That’s all changed. Grand Traverse County Probate Judge Melonie Stanton appointed Jennifer Rodgers as co-guardian of her mom. And she said she would have to issue an arrest warrant for Case after Case failed to show up for that hearing. (Most recently, Case missed another deadline on July 11; an arrest warrant was expected to be issued for her arrest through the probate court.)

“I’m very happy that there’s some clarity,” Rodgers said after the hearing. “It’s been a long road, and we just had to be patient until the situation exposed itself as an injustice.”

Lynn Hackenberger, Martha’s lifelong friend who filed one of the petitions to have Case removed, said after the hearing that she also was delighted with the outcome. She praised the manner in which Stanton handled the case. She said it was unlike her experience while the case was pending before Probate Court Judge Larry Nelson in Leelanau County.

“It was night and day,” Hackenberger said. “You had a judge that was willing to listen. In Leelanau, he didn’t give anybody a chance to say anything. He had his mind already made up.”

A COMPLETE BREAK-DOWN
At the July 3 hearing, a dozen friends and family showed up to support Rodgers. At the other side of the room, Rodgers’ adversary and estranged brother, Simeon Rodgers, stood alone. Jennifer Rodgers alleges that her brother took advantage of guardian and conservator laws in order to insinuate himself back into his mother’s million-dollar-plus estate after he had been left out of her will.

After the hearing, Simeon Rodgers said he had no comment and expressed anger about an earlier Northern Express article about the case. The complicated, heartrending saga was profiled in “Fighting for Mom,” a story that appeared in the Nov. 18, 2017, edition of Northern Express.

The case began when Simeon Rodgers and his son, Spencer, along with a state Adult Protective Services worker and Case, alleged that Jennifer Rodgers had taken advantage of and neglected her mother in late 2016 and early 2017, despite evidence that Jennifer Rogers had attempted to make arrangements for her mom.

Jennifer Rodgers was almost immediately stripped of legal control of her mom’s affairs even though Martha herself had legally declared — while she had been in good health — that she wanted her daughter to care for her if her health should decline. Nevertheless, APS and Nelson put Case in charge of Martha’s health and financial affairs.

The move infuriated Jennifer Rodgers. As Martha’s health faltered, Case enabled Simeon Rodgers, who had been written out of his mother’s will following a long-ago dispute, to get back into his mother’s life.

Relations between Jennifer Rodgers and Case deteriorated and soon, Jennifer Rodgers’ visits with her mom were strictly controlled by Case. After the publication of the Northern Express article in November, Case moved Martha from a nursing home in Northport to an undisclosed location (which turned out to be in Traverse City) that she would not reveal to Jennifer Rodgers or Martha’s friends in her hometown of Suttons Bay, apparently fearing they would inform Martha’s daughter of Martha’s location.

Full Article and Source:
Home Again - A Guardianship Overturned

Fraud in the Family

Jonathan Bartlett

When you think of the villains who defraud older people, you might picture crooks hacking into bank accounts or selling bogus stocks. But don’t be misled.

The real scoundrels might be sitting at your next family gathering, looking as innocent as folks in a Norman Rockwell painting. Roughly 6 out of 10 cases of elder financial abuse are committed by relatives, according to a large-scale 2014 study. And about 3 out of 10 instances can be traced to friends, neighbors or home care aides. In other words, 90 percent of perpetrators of fraud are known to their victims.

Even scarier: The closer the tie between perpetrator and victim, the greater the damage. A detailed study of elder financial abuse in Utah found that the amount stolen by people who knew their victim averaged $116,000 — nearly triple the haul taken by strangers. Criminals within the family got even more: $148,000. And the thieves who stole the most money — $262,000, on average — were the victims’ children.

Maybe you thought such thefts occurred only among the rich and famous — think of Brooke Astor, the New York heiress whose son was convicted of swindling her.

But elder-abuse experts say this crime infects a wide range of households. You just don’t hear about it. Only 1 in 44 cases of elder financial abuse get reported, estimates the National Adult Protective Services Association. Why? Victims are embarrassed. Families don’t want to air conflicts. People doubt money will be recovered. They also fear the perpetrator.

What follows is an attempt to spotlight this scourge — with true stories of exploitation, plus advice for preventing and remedying it. Our narratives are based on witness interviews, legal records and other documents. Due to some sources’ fear of retaliation, some identities have been disguised.

The Distant Son

In 2005, 88-year-old Francine Maloney was suffering from dementia and about to move to an Orange County, California, assisted living facility. (All names in this family have been changed.) Maloney had given her daughter, Amy, power of attorney to handle her affairs in 2000, a year after Francine’s husband had died. Amy, also from California, put her mother’s home up for sale.

Then Amy’s only sibling, Randy, got involved. His relationship with their parents had always been strained, and he had an alcohol problem they were slow to recognize, Amy says. In 2005, Randy was living with his wife, Madeline, in Westchester County, New York, and hadn’t been around much. But when he learned the house had to be sold, he became attentive—fast, Amy recalls. Unbeknownst to Amy, he flew west and got Francine to sign a new power of attorney giving him total control over her finances. Amy consulted a lawyer about fighting back, but the $10,000 retainer was too much. She and her brother stopped talking.

Once the house was sold, the $450,000 proceeds went into a trust for Francine’s benefit, controlled by Randy. In theory, Francine had plenty of money. Amy, however, suspected something was amiss. Yet a lawyer was too expensive, and she doubted social service agencies could help. So she communicated her concerns to Randy via his attorney and left it at that.

That is, until she visited her mother in May 2010 and found a fraud-alert notice for a Bank of America credit card in her mother's name. The letter listed more than two dozen suspicious charges, including $1,135 from a Boston hotel, a $372 Boston car rental and a $250 dry cleaning bill in Maryland where Randy then lived. Amy later determined that Randy had additionally revived a dormant Citibank credit card of Francine’s and was using it to pay for his living expenses. Payments to that account, Amy concluded, were coming from her mother’s trust account. By mid-2010, the account that had been seeded with $450,000 from the sale of Francine’s home had dwindled to $158.51—and the assisted living facility was owed nearly $9,500. Francine was broke.

After Amy filed a police report in June 2010, the local California sheriff’s office subpoenaed checks drawn on the trust account. One expenditure: $9,100 to a luxury-car dealer. Checks made out to Randy’s wife totaled $35,000.

“I wasn’t shocked,” Amy says.

Contacted for this article, Randy said he is 14 years sober. He disputed the overall amount Amy alleges he took from Francine’s account, asserting it was in the “low-six-figure range.” But he admitted via email that he took the money for his personal expenses and expressed remorse, terming his behavior “the most regrettable thing in my life.” He wrote, “I was under some financial pressures that I was too weak to stand up to. … The intention was always that the money would be returned from future realized gains.”

In the end, he got away with it. The sheriff in California told Amy the prosecutor had declined to pursue the case; the D.A., contacted for this article, has no record of the sheriff's referral. Prosecutors in Maryland passed as well, suggesting Francine wouldn’t be able to fly east to testify. The FBI said no, too. Amy could not afford to file a civil suit against her brother. “He is dead to me,” she says. “How can you do that — steal from your mother for luxuries?”

Eventually, Francine had to leave the assisted living facility. Because she couldn’t afford a nursing home, Amy placed her mother in a Social Security–financed small-scale custodial-care facility, a converted private home. Care was barely adequate. Francine died in February 2016, at age 99. “None of us would want to live like that,” Amy says.

Fraud Tainted by Emotion

Elder financial abuse, as in Francine’s case, doesn’t appear out of the blue, experts say. It may be the result of long-

festering family issues. Sometimes a big dose of rationalization is involved. “One of the things I’ve heard is, ‘It’s OK to steal or take this money from Mom and Dad because it’s my inheritance,’ ” says Jilenne Gunther, director of AARP’s BankSafe initiative.

Substance abuse may also play a role, Gunther says. The perpetrator may be a child or friend with a drug addiction.

Once someone close to you gets over the moral hurdles, the logistics are easy. A relative or friend, unlike a larcenous stranger, knows or can quickly find out exactly what you own and where it is. Most important, that person has your trust. Once a fraudster has that, experts say, getting you to agree to requests is relatively simple.

“This is the easiest crime to commit,” says Karen Sundstrom, who works for the Lexington County, South Carolina, Recreation and Aging Commission as an advocate for older adults who experience abuse. “It’s a piece of cake.”

The Family Friend

Ethel Simmons, now 87, expected to live out her life in comfort. She had pension income, Social Security and money in the bank. And, above all, a home.

She and her late husband, Elgie, bought their house in 1962 and raised their three sons there. It’s a green one-story dwelling with a large detached garage, located in south-central Los Angeles. Ethel was a full-time homemaker; Elgie worked as a mechanic in a factory. Johanna Holmes, whose parents were friends with the Simmonses, remembers the two families picnicking together when she was a kid. Johanna’s “Aunt Ethel” was active in the Church of God in Christ; she was, Johanna says, “fun loving, kind and caring.”

After Elgie died, in 2011, Ethel continued to live in the house, which had three rental units. One was occupied by her middle son, Wayne. (Ethel’s oldest child, who was born disabled, lives in a group home; her youngest son doesn’t figure in this story.) Wayne, who Johanna says was Ethel’s favorite, had been in trouble with the law over the years — a conviction for car theft, for one, and convictions or guilty pleas for drug possession and possession with intent to sell. “He was an addict,” says Johanna.

Wayne also had some worrisome friends, including one we’ll call Alfred.

Alfred grew close to Ethel after Elgie died. He shopped for her groceries. Ethel grew to trust him. Johanna didn’t. Around 2012, Ethel told her that Alfred wanted to buy her house for $200,000. Johanna, who suspected that Wayne was involved, was stunned. “I said, ‘How is he going to afford $200,000 when he doesn’t even have a job?’ ” she remembers. Ethel declined the offer.

Jonathan Bartlett

In 2015, Alfred moved onto the property. He soon went with Ethel to the bank and became joint owner of her only account. The balance wasn’t high — maybe $2,500 — notes Nicholas Levenhagen, a lawyer with Bet Tzedek Legal Services who later got involved in Ethel’s case. Money, however, was flowing in from Social Security and Elgie’s pension.

Early in 2016, after a stroke put Ethel in the hospital, Alfred had her meet with a man he said was an attorney, supposedly to discuss what Ethel understood were tax and insurance issues. Ethel didn’t remember signing a thing. It’s not clear even now who the “attorney” was, according to subsequent litigation. But somehow Alfred got the title to Ethel’s home, and Ethel never got a penny.

Ethel didn’t tell Johanna about any of this. But by March 2016, Alfred had begun intercepting Johanna’s calls to Ethel, making excuses for why she wasn’t available. Once, when Johanna got through, Ethel sounded frightened. “Why are you whispering? This is your phone,” Johanna recalls saying. By this time, according to court documents, Alfred controlled Ethel’s life, physically and financially. He used the joint account as a piggy bank, spending Ethel’s money for restaurant meals and gas bills. He drove around in a Mercedes. The City of Los Angeles alleged that narcotics were being sold out of Ethel’s garage.

Johanna, increasingly worried, recalls that on Good Friday, March 25, 2016, she drove over to the now-shabby house and barged in. She was shocked to find drug addicts in the front room. Ethel’s room was filthy, and she had been defecating in a pot.

Eventually, Los Angeles Adult Protective Services intervened, after Ethel was hospitalized following another stroke. She was placed in a nursing home, and an APS caseworker put Ethel and Johanna in touch with Bet Tzedek Legal Services, which filed suit to reverse the property transfer. Alfred did not contest the suit.

Ethel said, “I have money in the bank,” Johanna recalls. But Alfred had taken it all. Ethel didn’t even have any clothing. Hers were so foul that they had to be thrown out when she went to the hospital, Johanna says.

The house, with the title reverted back to Ethel, was sold in July for $440,000, which can be used for Ethel’s care. Johanna closely monitors the nursing home: “I have them on their toes when it comes to her.”

Ethel is not pursuing further legal action. Alfred cannot be located. As for Wayne’s role in what happened, Johanna is clear: “God forgive me, but I can’t stand him,” she says. “No way would I let anyone violate my parents.”

Where’s Justice?

Financial elder abuse is a crime. It’s theft. Yet people who complain to law enforcement are frequently told that it’s a “family” or “civil” matter or that the older person “won’t press charges.” These aren’t valid reasons to avoid action, says Paul R. Greenwood, head of the San Diego District Attorney’s Office Elder Abuse Prosecution Unit. Child-abuse victims, he notes, don’t decide whether abusers are charged.

Another excuse for not prosecuting is a victim’s inability to testify. But Peter A. Lichtenberg, director of the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University in Detroit, says that elder-abuse cases rely on forensic examination of financial records more than they do on witness testimony.

An added hurdle: Police and prosecutors may be suspicious about those who make accusations. “I often get these calls from adult family members who want me to prosecute the other sibling,” Greenwood says. “I interrupt and say, ‘Now, where were you when all this was going on?’ ”

Plus, a victim might say the money was a gift, says Greenwood: “ ‘He’s a nice boy, and he’s been helping me around the house.’ Those arguments are very difficult to overcome.”

There’s one more reason these crimes are rarely prosecuted. People who have been robbed won’t admit it. “It’s hard to get victims of elder abuse to talk,” says Lori Delagrammatikas, a longtime specialist in elder abuse and the incoming president of the National Adult Protective Services Association. “They’re so embarrassed.”

The Housekeeper

Lori Delagrammatikas is quite familiar with the embarrassment caused by elder financial abuse. It happened to her mother. Janet Dermy had a doctorate in education and spent her life as a teacher, at one time running a small technical college. She was a tough, hardheaded woman. She was perfectly fine — self-sufficient and healthy — when, at 76, she moved into an independent-living facility north of Phoenix in 2009.

Janet, like other residents, had an apartment with a small kitchen. On-staff housekeepers tidied up every day. While residents could get rides to local places, Janet drove herself in a late-model four-door sedan.

AARP

One day in 2012, Janet told Lori — who lived a seven-hour drive away — that she had a new car. Janet also told Lori that months before, she had sold the previous car to her housekeeper. The housekeeper (let’s call her Mary) had been chatting daily with Janet about her marriage. “She said she was a victim of domestic violence, her husband didn’t work, and he was pushing her to work more and more hours,” Lori says. Mary told Janet that she needed a car because her old one wasn’t working.

Janet, taking pity on Mary, sold her car to her for monthly payments of about $100. Lori never learned how much Mary promised to pay in total. There was no paperwork. All she discovered was that not long after Mary made her first (and only) payment, she vanished. She was dismissed for borrowing money from residents.

Janet had been conned. “I see it so much at work that I wasn’t surprised,” Lori admits. “But I was frustrated my mom wasn’t willing to do anything about it,” such as file a complaint. Janet died last year. “It’s humiliating when you get ripped off,” Lori adds. “It hits people in the deepest level of their self-image.”

Lori was developing a training program for protective services workers when her mother was swindled. “I talked to my mom a lot about the work I do — ‘Oh, let me tell you about the latest scam that’s happening,’ ” Lori says. “Didn’t make a bit of difference.”

Full Article & Source:
Fraud in the Family

Fighting fraud against the elderly

This article was originally published in The Crime Report, a criminal justice news service.

Paul Greenwood, San Diego’s Deputy District Attorney, has been investigating crimes against the elderly for over two decades.  As head of San Diego’s Elder Abuse Unit, he’s been a front-row witness to the tragedies such crimes have left in their wake.

“I have seen for myself many instances where victims in their seventies, eighties, nineties, never recover,” he said. “They don’t recover financially; they don’t recover psychologically. And emotionally, it can be devastating for them.”

Over the course of his career, Greenwood has emerged as one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for elderly crime victims. He has not only pushed California state lawmakers to pass aggressive elder abuse reforms, but he’s also testified numerous times before Congress, calling for a nationwide change in our approach to elder abuse.

But the subject is still below the national radar. That, says Greenwood, is why such crimes should be given separate attention in the criminal code.

When President Obama cited the need to train more prosecutors to combat elder abuse at the 2016 White House Conference on Aging, it “was probably the first time I’ve ever heard [a] president in the last 20 years even mention it,” said Greenwood.

“Other crimes– particularly gang violence, child abuse, trafficking, they seem to get the attention of the politicians. But sadly, not so much elder abuse.”

Currently, only an estimated two percent of incidents involving financial exploitation of the elderly is reported, according to research conducted by the National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA).

Nevertheless, advocates say that public awareness has been growing.

Over the past decade, all but four states in the U.S. have passed legislation to address elder abuse, and to a lesser extent, elder financial exploitation.

People appear more willing to pick up a phone and call somebody when a relative or a friend is victimized.

Still, Greenwood says, it remains a challenge for public policy: “Once somebody reports it, does anything happen?”

Generally speaking, Americans view stealing from the elderly as a morally repugnant act. It is no coincidence that the 2016 amendments to the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act draw on several notorious cases of seniors losing everything to fraudsters.

But for all the evocative value of such cases, there are still relatively few local resources committed to the investigation and prosecution of these crimes—with the exception of a few counties scattered across the U.S.

Despite the new legislation adopted by states over the past decade, elder financial exploitation is still not recognized as a crime in its own right.

“I think [this] is related to age-ism, to be honest,” Elizabeth Loewy, former chief of the Elder Abuse Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, said in an interview with The Crime Report.
 
New York City has a record of aggressively prosecuting elder fraud, despite the difficulty in getting exploitation statutes passed—largely thanks to the work of Elder Abuse and Elder Fraud Units in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

Loewy pointed to the scarce number of Elder Abuse Units around the country, especially in comparison to domestic violence, child abuse, and sex crimes units.

“I felt fortunate that we had one,” said Loewy, “but we didn’t have the resources of the other units, even though we had more cases.”

Brenda Uekert, director of the Center for Elders and Courts, a project of the National Center for State Courts, compared it to the early days of domestic violence laws:

“Those crimes were hidden, because people were charged with assault or battery,” she said. “So if you were to collect statistics on domestic violence in 1980, the crime didn’t exist, [and] the problem didn’t exist.”

Some of the worst cases of elder financial exploitation are not being perpetrated by strangers, but by family members and caretakers who have access to an elder’s life savings.

“Unless you have law enforcement and prosecutors trained on elder abuse, I don’t know that they recognize this is a criminal behavior,” said Uekert.

“Sometimes in the law enforcement arena, and we’re really working on this, it tends to be discarded as a family issue,” said Julie Schoen, deputy director of the National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA). “Or, they perceive that maybe the older adult has some sort of cognitive impairment, or they honestly don’t take it seriously.”

“The piece that I am particularly concerned about is when there is a legal document such as a Power of Attorney, or court-ordered guardianship or conservatorship,” said Uekert. “Very often somebody shows that to law enforcement, or prosecution, and they say ‘well, you’ve got this civil arrangement, so this must be a civil problem.’ And that’s one of the challenges I think that we still need to overcome.

“Just because this document exists, doesn’t give that person the [right] to take out $50,000 and buy himself a boat.”

Once an elderly person has given money to a criminal in an IRS, lotto, or ‘grandparent’ scam, police often say there isn’t much they can do, said Schoen, “They don’t [treat] it like a property crime or a theft.”

Patrick Lamb, Assistant D.A. of Jefferson County, Alabama, said he was “quite certain” that the majority of such crimes in his county never made it to his office, even though he heads a white-collar crime unit that focuses on public corruption, fraud, and elder exploitation.

“I find that frustrating,” he said.

Since it was formed in 2014, the Jefferson County unit has focused on cases where a family member abuses Power of Attorney to take money from an older relative. In one recent case recounted by Lamb, a man abandoned his aunt in a nursing home and cleaned out her accounts, leaving no money left for her care.

But cases of third-party theft, where an older person is victimized by scams over the Internet, mail, or telephone, are not making it to the Jefferson County DA’s office.

“Even when it’s reported, if it’s at all complex, it’s not investigated,” said Lamb. “If the elderly are taken advantage of by an email, then once they’ve sent the money, what are the police supposed to do?”

He added: “If you’re a Birmingham police detective and you get 20 calls of elder exploitation, they’re all going to the white collar unit, and they’ll have a stack of police reports to follow up on. And if the first one is ‘niece took $500,000 out of her retirement account,’ that’s one where there’s something you can do: you can go talk to the complainant, [and] you can look at the bank account.

“But if the next one is ‘somebody called me and said my grandson was in jail in Georgia, and I needed to transfer $200,000 to get him out of jail,’ there’s nothing to follow up on.”

A scam like this “may be more clearly criminal than a caregiver or a family member,” said Lamb, but “you don’t have a person to charge or to investigate or to hold accountable.”

Resources vary throughout the country, and so do attitudes about the roles of law enforcement and prosecutors.

The Jefferson County D.A.’s office has one investigator for all white collar crimes, and adheres to a more conventional procedural chain. If police never find a suspect, the case never makes it to the D.A’s  office.

In contrast, the San Diego D.A.’s Elder Abuse Unit has three prosecutors, four investigators, and actively seeks out cases of suspected fraud.

Greenwood realizes that “most prosecutors around the country don’t see it as their role to rattle the cage and go look for cases,” he said.

Last year, one of Greenwood’s investigators even worked full time on a local ‘grandma scam,’ tracing the money all the way back to India through prepaid Walmart and Green Dot cards.

Twenty years ago, when Greenwood’s Elder Abuse Unit was first formed, former Chief of Police David Bejarano also created a special unit within the San Diego Police Department to deal with elder crime.

These combined resources within the DA’s office, law enforcement and state legislature have made San Diego one of the country’s leading counties for prosecuting elder fraud.

Needed: A ‘Cultural Shift’

Based on what prosecutors and national elder advocates are saying, it will take nothing less than a complete cultural shift within the criminal justice system to protect older Americans.

“It’s very good to have a case brought to you all tied up in a bow where we’ve got the defendant, we’ve got the fingerprints, we’ve got the confession,” Loewy told The Crime Report.

“But these cases in particular require investigation, they require extra work—because many of the victims won’t come forward to talk about what happened, or they don’t even realize that they’ve been defrauded.”

Greenwood, whom the NCEA called “the DA we all wish we had,” believes prosecutors need to change their traditional role:

“Most prosecutors are trained to be reactive,” he said. “With elder financial abuse we have to be far more proactive— so we have to talk to the banks, the credit unions, we have to talk to adult relatives, neighbors, mail carriers, and obviously the police departments to say ‘what are you seeing? what are you hearing? and what’s being done about it?’”

Full Article & Source:
Fighting fraud against the elderly

Alabama Governor Awards Grant to Assist Elderly, Disabled Abuse Victims

Gov. Robert Bentley has awarded a $1.9 million grant to provide care services for elderly and disabled victims of abuse, neglect or exploitation.

The Alabama Department of Human Resources is using the funds to assist its Adult Protective Services program throughout the state. The program provides short-term in-home care and supervision, homemaking and sitter services for elderly and disabled adults who remain in their own homes after an abusive caregiver has been removed.

“Elderly and disabled victims who cannot look after themselves deserve to have help and to be cared for in their time of need,” Bentley said. “I am pleased to help DHR’s efforts to provide comfort and much-needed assistance to those victims who need it most.”

Full Article and Source:
Governor Awards Grant to Assist Elderly, Disabled Abuse Victims

Who Guards the Guardians? Part two

Guardianships are increasingly common, a trend typically attributed to an aging populace and scattered families.

In Texas, the number of guardianships grew 60 percent from 2011 to 2015. Nearly $3 billion in personal wealth is under control of guardians in Texas, according to one recent estimate from state researchers. 

But even those who oversee the system and write its laws are only recently coming around to a troubling fact: In much of Texas, there is nobody watching these cases.

Ten large Texas counties run their own guardianship systems, with legally trained probate judges, court-appointed investigators and visitors — employees or volunteers who check up on people under guardianship — to ensure that a guardianship is still necessary and isn’t being used as a tool for abuse or theft. Dallas County, where Rosamond had lived for most of her life, has such a system. But she was in Lubbock County when her son Phil went to court. Lubbock County reported having 1,425 guardianships in August 2015, ranking eighth in the state both in total guardianships and guardianships per capita. The county has no system to ensure that guardians file required annual reports on the person they’re looking after, nor staff to check for evidence of fraud.

In recent years Lubbock has come to epitomize the dangers of guardianship when nobody’s watching. As Rosamond Bradley recovered and tried in vain to have her rights restored, courts in Lubbock and nearby counties placed more than 50 people who did need protection in the care of strangers who lived hundreds of miles away, visited rarely, and walked off with their money. Lubbock has particularly weak oversight. Last fall, state investigators began a survey that is revealing a lack of accountability and potential for abuse all over Texas. Several years ago, Lubbock conducted a similar self-audit, but after briefly reckoning with its shortcomings, the county’s guardianship system appears as ill-equipped as ever.

What qualifies you to run a stranger’s life? In Texas, it’s a brief class followed by a 100-question test. Private guardianship is a small but growing profession, and Texas’ 358 certified guardians come from all backgrounds. Some are nurses or social workers. Others have little or no relevant experience.

Most guardianships, by far, are awarded to family members or friends. But if someone doesn’t have a family member nearby, or a judge decides the family is a risky choice, the court appoints a professional, typically paid from the life savings of the person they’re looking after. In Texas, 72 such professionals work within a state-run program in the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS), with supervisors who review their work. Locally run programs in a few large counties employ dozens more, and around 50 active guardians are independent.

In 2005, [Former El Paso Probate Judge Max] Higgs began alerting lawmakers that the state had become far too permissive. He spread stories of elderly and disabled people living in squalid conditions, even after visits from Adult Protective Services. Lawmakers passed reforms that year, requiring licenses for professional guardians, among other changes.

Attorney Terry Hammond

In both rounds of reform, though, [Attorney Terry] Hammond says, lawmakers hardly touched the most basic troubles with guardianship. Texas, he says, still lacks a statewide safety net to make sure nobody slips through the cracks, and puts far too much authority in the hands of county judges who may not be qualified to make legal decisions. “This system may have been appropriate in 1845 or 1865 or even 1910,” Hammond says. “But it’s entirely inappropriate for the 21st century.”

Full Article and Source:
Who Guards the Guardians?

New York State Cost of Financial Exploitation Study

The New York State Cost of Financial Exploitation Study, released June 15, 2016, is one of the most comprehensive studies to quantify both the financial and the non-financial costs of financial exploitation of vulnerable adults.

This study includes the largest number of Adult Protective Services (APS) financial exploitation cases to date in any single state. In New York State, APS provides protective services to adults 18 and older who, because of physical or mental impairment, are unable to protect themselves from abuse, neglect, financial exploitation or other harm, and have no one else willing and able to assist responsibly.

Source:
New York State Office of Children and Family Services

READ the "New York State Cost of Financial Exploitation Study

Pennsylvania Stands United Against Elder Abuse

HARRISBURG, Pa., June 15, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Lieutenant Governor Mike Stack joined Secretary of Aging Teresa Osborne, and Deputy Secretary of Banking and Securities Brian LaForme in a World Elder Abuse Awareness Day event in the Capitol calling on all Pennsylvanians to stand united with communities around the globe to raise awareness about elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation.

They were joined by Representative Hennessey, Majority Chair of the House Aging and Older Adults Services Committee; Karen Buck, Executive Director of the SeniorLAW Center; and Liana Walters, Executive Director of the Senate Aging and Youth Committee on behalf of Senator Art Haywood; along with protective service investigators from counties throughout the commonwealth who were recognized for the critical role they play in protecting older Pennsylvanians in their local community from all types of abuse.

"Elder abuse is a global societal issue which impacts the health and human rights of millions of older adults around the world," said Lieutenant Governor Stack. "Preventing elder abuse must not only be a part of the national conversation about how we care for older Americans, but it must also be a part of the commonwealth's plan to support and protect older Pennsylvanians." 

"Older Pennsylvanians have worked hard to raise their families, build our communities and defend our country in times of crisis," said Secretary of Aging Teresa Osborne.  "For their many contributions, they deserve to have access to a protective service system that is equipped with the tools needed to keep them safe from harm and neglect."

Elder abuse can take many forms, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, financial exploitation, neglect, abandonment, and self-neglect. Signs of abuse can include unexplained bruises, burns or broken bones, lack of basic hygiene, access to adequate food, clean or appropriate clothing, unexplained weight loss, social isolation, changes in banking habits, or giving away assets without an apparent reason.

Anyone can report elder abuse by calling the 24-hour statewide elder abuse hotline at 1-800-490-8505, or by contacting their local Area Agency on Aging. Pennsylvania law protects those who report suspected abuse from retaliation and civil or criminal liability; all calls are free and confidential.

Last year, over 22,000 cases of suspected abuse and neglect were reported to the Department of Aging's protective services program, which works with investigators from the state's 52 Area Agencies on Aging to protect older Pennsylvanians. Protective services are mandated by the Older Adults Protective Services Act (OAPSA), which safeguards the rights of older adults.

For more information on how to prevent and report elder abuse, visit www.aging.pa.gov

Full Article & Source:
Pennsylvania Stands United Against Elder Abuse

Oklahoma: Adult Protective Services Offers Training

Adult Protective Services in Pontotoc County will commemorate World Elder Abuse Awareness Day on June 22 with a local effort to raise awareness about elder abuse and neglect in our community.

Adult Protective Services in Pontotoc County will host Financial Exploitation of Vulnerable Adults: The Growing Epidemic. This training for local financial institutions regarding the financial exploitation of vulnerable adults will be held on Wednesday, June 22, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Department of Human Services, 2320 Arlington Suite B, Ada. Representatives from all local financial institutions are invited to attend this discussion on identifying indicators of financial exploitation and strategies that can be used to respond to possible financial exploitation situations. Please RSVP to Cathy Wood at (580) 310-7050 or cathyb.wood@okdhs.org before Tuesday, June 21.

Did you know that every day 10,000 people turn 65 in the US alone? That trend is going to continue for nearly the next 20 years. Our demographics are shifting, and we will soon have more elder people in the US than ever before. At the same time that the population is growing, we know that a startling number of elders face abusive conditions. Every year an estimated 5 million, or 1 in 10, older Americans are victims of elder abuse, neglect, or exploitation. And that’s only part of the picture: Experts believe that for every case of elder abuse or neglect reported, as many as 23.5 cases go unreported.

WEAAD serves as a call-to-action for individuals, organizations, and communities to raise awareness about abuse, neglect, and exploitation of elders. The International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and the World Health Organization at the United Nations (UN) launched the first World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD) on June 15, 2006 in an effort to unite communities around the world in raising awareness about elder abuse. WEAAD is in support of the UN’s International Plan of Action acknowledging the significance of elder abuse as a public health and human rights issue. 

Full Article & Source:
Adult Protective Services offers training

Demonstrators fight for elderly woman in Harris County Adult Protective Services

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Demonstrators were back in action this afternoon at the Harris County Civil Courthouse to let the public know the health of Doris Davis is on the decline.

She's the 87-year-old who was placed in Adult Protective Services and the Guardianship program in Harris County in 2014. That's after a medical evaluation determined Davis suffered from dementia and was not capable of living alone.

Now, a new independent medical evaluation taken at the urging of supporters who want Davis released from a nursing home, indicates the widow with no children should be living in an assisted living facility.

The doctor also said Davis meets the legal definition of being incapacitated despite what some protestors say.

The report also shows Davis has partial capacity and the medical expert warned the courts she has short term and immediate recall memory issues.

The doctor further stated Davis could be easily influenced and exploited by others.

In the meantime, supporters say they're concerned about Davis' immediate health right now.

Kofi Taharka says the frail senior is now hospitalized.

The latest medical evaluation has been filed with the courts.

Full Article & Source:
Demonstrators fight for elderly woman in Harris County Adult Protective Services

Florida Senator Nancy Detert's Guardianship Bill, SB 232, Heads to Governor Scott's Desk

Senator Nancy Detert

First came the stories that sparked concern and outrage. Then came the legislation.

And Wednesday, with nearly unanimous approval in the Legislature, came reforms that supporters say will make Florida a national model for regulation of guardians who care for the state’s frail elders.

The legislation (SB 232), sponsored by Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, and Rep. Larry Ahern, R-Seminole, will allow the state Department of Elder Affairs to expand its public guardianship office to include private, or professional, guardians, who are paid to manage the affairs of seniors deemed by the courts as too frail or mentally challenged to care for themselves.

Two weeks after the Senate unanimously passed the legislation, the House approved the measure 115-2 and sent it to Gov. Rick Scott.

The bill, which Scott is expected to sign, will allow the newly renamed Office of Public and Professional Guardians to establish standards for public and private guardians, register guardians, investigate complaints, develop procedures for discipline and set penalties for guardians found in violation.

Detert, who is leaving the Senate to run for the Sarasota County Commission, considered the bill her top priority for her last session in the Legislature. And, in an unusual move, the 39 other senators became co-sponsors of the legislation.

“I think that the bill is very important and I think everyone should talk about it in their own community,” Detert said about the Senate support.

Detert said with Florida’s and the nation’s growing elderly population, the issue of guardianship and the potential abuses is a national problem.

“There are so many horrible, blatant cases,” Detert said. “Every state was blindsided.”

But Detert said with the enactment of the new bill Florida will have “the strongest law in the nation.”

“It will be the model for the other states,” she said.

Detert said she was prompted to file the legislation after hearing complaints from families in her community, including Julie Ferguson, whose legal efforts on behalf of her mother, Marise London, were the subject of a story in the Herald-Tribune’s series, “The Kindness of Strangers,” which highlighted problems with the guardianship system.

In her 80s, London — for years the owner of a well-known art gallery and frame shop in Gulf Gate — wanted to stay in her beloved house. In January 2013, the 12th Judicial Circuit Court named the nonprofit agency Lutheran Services Florida as London’s guardian, at the request of the Department of Children and Families’ Adult Protective Services division. The agency was paid from London’s assets to make decisions about her finances and health, at the rate of $85 an hour — while Ferguson maintained she could provide better care for free, and had a right to do so under a Power of Attorney document her mother signed before suffering from cognitive impairment. Ferguson has spent years and thousands of dollars trying to gain guardianship of her mother.

Full Article and Source:
Guardianship Bill Heads to Scott's Desk