Brooklyn Prosecutor Calls It ‘a Terrifying Social Phenomenon’ : Abuse, Neglect of Dependent Elders Emerges as New ‘National Pastime’

Alice didn’t dare wait for the elevator.

She ran down six flights of stairs, her 69 years and a bad hip weighing heavily--but not as heavily as the need to get away from her 52-year-old son who was waving a knife and threatening to kill her. Out on the street, Alice headed for a neighbor’s phone to let the police know that he had turned abusive again.

“You work and support a child all your life,” she said, “then they act like they hate you.”

Alice (not her real name) isn’t alone. As many as 2 million elderly people may be abused, researchers say, often by their children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren--the very people they depend on for help in their old age.

“This happens with these blood relatives--sons, daughters, nieces, nephews,” said Dorothy Brodie, a 75-year-old retired social worker who works with the Bronx Elder Abuse Support Project.

Verbal Abuse Common

“They’ll do things like keep telling the victim ‘You’re stupid. You’re senile. You have Alzheimer’s disease.’ They’ll do things like maybe even taking their dentures away so they’re forced to eat soft food; or take eyeglasses away so they can’t even read a newspaper.”

One in 25 older adults is abused, according to an estimate in a 1985 report to Congress, “Elder Abuse: A National Disgrace.” The abuse takes all forms: psychological torment, neglect, theft--and often, it is physical.

In New York City, an 18-year-old man punched and kicked his 87-year-old great-grandmother and later explained that: “She bugs me because she asks me to fix her something to eat.”

A 54-year-old salesman on Long Island was charged last year with having brutalized his parents for three years while demanding that they turn over their life savings. When they saw police arrive, neighbors asked, “Did he kill them?”

“‘This is a terrifying social phenomenon,” said Elizabeth Holtzman, district attorney of the New York borough of Brooklyn, where reports of such abuse have risen 400% since 1986, to 370 cases last year. She attributed the increase to the widespread use of crack, a highly addictive form of cocaine.

Rising Statistics

Last year, 140,000 cases of elder abuse were reported nationwide, 10% more than in 1987, said Toshio Tatara, director of the National Aging Resource Center on Elder Abuse in Washington, D.C. “People still find it incredible that we abuse our elders. They said the same thing about children 20 years ago--and we’re doing it like a national pastime.”

Yet, Tatara estimated that just one in 14 incidents is likely to be reported.

The typical victim is 75 or older, a woman and generally dependent. The abuser often is a son or daughter, the congressional report said.

The lawmakers heard about a 68-year-old South Carolina woman whose daughter kept her in a room that was so cold the urine in a catheter froze; about a 75-year-old retired nurse from Massachusetts whose 42-year-old son attacked him with a hatchet; about a San Francisco woman whose $167,000 estate was whittled to $3,000 by a son-in-law.

“These cases are really difficult and scary, even to experienced social workers,” said Lucy Friedman, director of the Victim Services Agency in New York, which helped Alice seek a temporary restraining order against her son.

Mother Blames ‘the Wine’

“I was really afraid of him,” said Alice. She still bears a scar on her neck where her son once sliced her. “Once he gets the wine, he goes crazy.”

The abusers many times have their own problems: a drug or alcohol problem, being out of work, broke or mentally unstable. The violent treatment may be repayment for abuse that the son or daughter received as a child. A crowded home may spark it; middle-aged people free at last of their own children may resent having to take in a frail parent. In some cases, the stress of caring for an elderly relative is to blame.

Paramedics called to a home in San Fernando, Calif., found 77-year-old Virginia Grimes Jeter covered with excrement and maggots in a filthy bedroom. She died five hours later.

The woman’s daughter, Cynthia Jeter Green, 39, had promised her mother she would not put her in an old folks’ home, prosecutor Lee Harris said. A probation report described Green as “under a degree of emotional distress.”

Daughter Sentenced

She pleaded no contest to abuse charges and was ordered to get psychiatric counseling and perform 300 hours of community service. She did not return several calls from a reporter.

“The idea that people for some reason or another do not want to put their loved ones in a nursing home, or feel they have to be responsible for total care, is fairly common in these cases,” Rosalie Wolf, associate director of the University Center on Aging at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, said.

Part of the solution is getting older people to take responsibility for stopping, even preventing abuse, said Lee Pearson, assistant manager of criminal justice services for the American Assn. of Retired Persons.

Elderly people should keep regular appointments and stay in touch with old friends, especially after moving in with a relative, Pearson said. They should have someone stop by once a week to make sure that all is well.

Telephone Assistance

New York’s Victim Services Agency maintains a 24-hour phone line for access to counseling and help in court, getting locks changed, and finding shelter, transportation and clothing.

In a Bronx group shelter called Safe Place, the elderly hesitantly confide what has happened to them and try to make sense of it.

“People just believe and hope so much that this will be the last time, that things will change, he won’t do it again--but they do,” said Diana Walcott, director of the Bronx Elder Abuse Support Project and leader of Safe Place.

Many parents blame themselves, Friedman said. “They say ‘Well, how did I bring up this monster?’ ”

Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have statutes requiring that abuse be reported, but those involved with the cases say the nation has a long way to go toward recognizing the problem.

The states spend an average of $22 to aid each abused child, but just $2.90 for an abused older person, Congress found. Its report recommended emergency shelters, tax credits for families caring for older adults, amendments to Medicare and Medicaid to eliminate limits on benefits and services to elderly people in relatives’ homes, as well as mandatory reporting of abuse.

“It’s so foreign to our thinking,” said Holtzman. “Doctors won’t even ask if abuse has taken place. It’s possible the person . . . will be sent back to the same environment, possibly to be killed.”