Taken from...
The Sad Saga of Elder Abuse:
Prevalence Far Greater Than Perception
by Albert Samaha
examiner.com
"According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, between 1 and 2 million Americans age 65 or older have been injured, exploited, or otherwise mistreated by someone on whom they depended for care or protection.
Yet elder abuse remains vastly underreported. The NCEA declares that only one out of every fourteen cases of elder abuse is reported, about 7%. Furthermore, only one out of every twenty-five cases of financial elder abuse is reported, about 4%. By comparison according to the latest National Crime Victimization Studies, sexual assault, a notoriously underreported crime, is reported around 41% of the time.
These statistics make chilling sense because, quite frankly, elder abuse is impossibly hard to catch and distressingly easy to commit. After all, the victims are often incapable of recognizing the malignancy. The perpetrators are people whom they mostly trust and care for-- be it family, doctor or lawyer. And particularly in the case of financial abuse, illicit behavior can be veiled by a cloak of legal loop-holes, malleable medical diagnoses, and pure manipulation."
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| Legal loop holes, pure manipulation, malleable reports, OH MY! In my conservator nightmare, who would you cast as Dorothy? How about the Wizard of Oz? The Wicked Witch of the West? |
| "I'm melting." |
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| "There's no place like home." |
