Campaign Aims to Curb Problem of Elder Abuse

Federal, county and city leaders launched a public awareness campaign Thursday to draw attention to the growing problem of senior abuse: elderly men and women victimized by con artists or, more frequently, by family members.

The campaign, kicked off by senior citizen-Mayor Richard Riordan, is intended to encourage wider reporting of the issue as well as to step up prosecution of those who are responsible. WISE Senior Services, a private, nonprofit group devoted to helping senior citizens, is leading the effort.

“We are here this morning to launch a crusade,” said City Councilman Mike Feuer, the council’s leading advocate on the issue. “We are going to put an end to the abuse of our parents and our grandparents.”

Already, the city attorney’s office has formed a special task force. It is charged with ferreting out such cases as the young woman who beat up her grandmother when the older woman turned up the volume on the TV too much. In another instance, three women appropriated their grandmother’s house as a base for their drug dealing, while they let their bedridden relative go hungry and thirsty.

“We want these crimes to be reported,” City Atty. James Hahn said.

Federal authorities are also taking aim at the problem, with the FBI investigating cases involving alleged financial fraud against elderly people and federal prosecutors taking advantage of special sentencing rules that give longer jail terms to certain types of criminals who target senior citizens in their frauds.

The FBI has also established a call center to alert potential victims about the practices of fraudulent telephone salespeople and to develop information about phony phone solicitors, particularly those who prey on the elderly.

On Thursday, officials warned that the abuse of senior citizens is believed to be vastly underreported, in part because victims are often ashamed to have been conned or to have been victimized by their own family.

According to statistics gathered by the city, 25,000 senior citizens are abused every year in Los Angeles; of those incidents, less than 10% are reported. Last year, just 60 cases were prosecuted locally by the city attorney’s office.

Hahn said the main reason for that is the shame and embarrassment some victims feel. But he also noted that police officers are not always trained to look for signs of elder abuse when they respond to calls. Although 60 prosecutions last year is an extraordinarily low number for a problem that some believe is so widespread, Hahn noted that it actually represents a high percentage of the cases presented to his office for consideration.

Only 70 such cases were developed by police last year and turned over to the city attorney’s office, he said. More serious crimes were handled by the offices of the district attorney and U.S. attorney.

As a result, the city attorney’s task force on the issue is drawing in police officers as well as prosecutors. Hahn said he hopes to make it standard procedure for police who see signs of elderly sufferers from abuse or neglect to fill out crime reports and collect evidence.

Feuer credited the LAPD with already taking steps to make its officers more sensitive to elder abuse. Led by Cmdr. Margaret York, the department will soon have an expert on elderly abuse in every division, Feuer said.

The efforts by the LAPD and city attorney’s office are intended to improve the law enforcement response to abuses of senior citizens, but those efforts pale compared to the need for people to report the problem more aggressively. That obligation, officials and experts said, rests largely on victims, as well as on their friends and others who may see signs of abuse but be reluctant to tell anyone.

That is the dual purpose of the public relations effort: to break the stigma against reporting abuse and to simplify the process.

As part of the campaign, a toll-free number has been established to take reports of suspected senior abuse. The number is: (800) 992-1660.