widow who became romantically involved with an individual on a dating
website.
She built this relationship with a man who claimed to be from Los
Angeles but was currently working overseas. They slowly developed their
relationship via text, online messages and pictures, but never through video.
After months of connecting with one another, the man began asking for
money. Having developed feelings for this man, the woman eventually gave
him a total of $1 million over a span of a few months.
“She was in love with this person,” said Sarah Barnard, manager of the Elder Abuse Prevention Program at Wise & Healthy Aging, as she detailed the story. “And she was in love with who she thought this person was.”
It was a scam. A woman who had secure retirement now had no retirement. And she then had to take in a roommate and get a job.
“She told me she was suicidal after this happened,” Barnard said. “This
woman, not only did she lose all of her money, but she also had this sense of loss of a relationship.”
Barnard was one of many expert panelists at an elder-abuse workshop on June 21 at the El Dorado Park Senior Center who presented residents with preventative measures on how to avoid the exploitation of older citizens in the Long Beach area. The presentation was separated into two categories— physical abuse/neglect and financial abuse.
Each category had its own team of panel experts on-hand to inform the
public about certain topics of elder abuse. Rosemary Lewallen, with the
Long Beach Elder Abuse Prevention Team, served as the moderator for the
event.
Fourth District Councilmember Daryl Supernaw gave opening remarks. He gave advice for those who serve as caretakers for their older relatives.
“This is a topic of great passion to me,” the councilmember said. “My mother is still alive; she’s 96 years old. And my dad died about seven years ago, and I had caregiver challenges with them for about the last 15 years. I wish I had attended a seminar like this in the beginning, but I never had this luxury.”
Supernaw promptly took out a sheet he made for his mom that had a list of
her medications, date of birth, medical history and a visual of her insurance
card and driver’s license. The councilmember had all the information printed on one piece of paper in the event that she may need to go to the hospital, and he, the caretaker, was not immediately present to assist in the situation and provide the necessary information.
“If you do have to go the emergency room, this is all the information you
need,” Supernaw explained. “And you might have this information handy
with you already, but you don’t know who might be taking your loved one
to the hospital, and this is handy to have.”
Jokingly, he added, “And my recommendation is that you do this before
you’re elected to council, or else you won’t have any time to do this.”
Supernaw also suggested having some sort of system in place for any caregiver taking care of a loved one.
He advised that the caregiver always call and confirm they are present in the
home. He also added that a checklist should be made that delineates all the activities necessary for the caregiver to do for the person who needs supervision.
“Take the time to do this, and your caregiver will never have to question
about what they have to do,” Supernaw said.
Laura Rath, a senior program officer with the Archstone Foundation, a private grantmaking organization that seeks to contribute toward meeting the needs of the aging population, also gave remarks at the start of the event, and she highlighted how prominent the issue of elder abuse is.
“So, I know we’re all here today because we all believe that an advanced society can and must find solutions to the large- and small-scale problems
stemming from elder abuse and neglect,” she said. “And this is unfortunately
a disturbing part of the lives of far too many Americans, and too
many of our fellow citizens here in Long Beach, as well.”
Dr. Steven Tam, an associate clinical professor at UC Irvine, is the director
of the health-assessment program for seniors at the SeniorHealth Center
at the university. Tam illustrated some of the signs his team looks for in distinguishing between normal bruising or signs of aging in elder citizens and signs of physical abuse or neglect.
“We have to look at the context of all this,” Tam said. “We are looking
at the location of injuries that occur and suspicious stories that don’t fit
together. Changing stories. Changes in behavior. These are the things that are red flags. Getting older, we typically see bruises on your forearm when you bang your arm on something, or maybe it’s your shin because you’re kicking your leg onto something. In the elder-abuse world, when we see bruises and injuries, we are really paying attention to ones on your face, on the body or your head. I mean, you
normally don’t go around hitting your head when you wake up. These are the kind of things that raise flags for us.”
The challenge becomes pinpointing what is normal and what is suspicious, Tam said. He admitted that there is “still a lot to learn about the true numbers and prevalence of elder abuse.”
The problem is that elder abuse tends to go unreported, he said. Or, at times, people just don’t recognize or act on it. He said it’s particularly difficult for people in the community because they simply may not be aware some form of abuse is happening within their neighborhood.
Tam said the prevalence rate of elder abuse is between 3 to 5 percent of those people ages 65 and over. In an attempt to put the numbers into perspective,
the UC Irvine professor said taking 5 percent of the current 46-million
elder population would amount to 2.3 million people who are potentially
being abused. He added that for every case of elder abuse that goes reported,
there are potentially five to six cases that go unreported.
He encouraged folks to make an attempt to be more aware of the issue.
“I think if there is something that raises your attention or if it’s a little
out of order, then we need to think this through and think a little more carefully with that,” Tam said.
Ralph Pascual, a human services administrator for Adult Protective Services
(APS), a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week organization that investigates elder abuse, encouraged those who know or may be a victim of abuse to report the issue to the APS office at 877-477-3646.
Christina Nairn, with the L.A. Department of Mental Health and a licensed clinical social worker, addressed the topic of hoarding as a form of self-neglect.
Hoarding, the failure to discard excess items in the home to the point that
it may block certain living areas, is a source of distress, Nairn said.
The department gets calls from concerned community members who felt
their neighbors were living in an unsafe home environment.
A particular client that the department assisted— a 92-year-old male— lived alone in a single-family home. The man had so many items in his home, he was unable to access his refrigerator— he would go daily to the grocery store in order to get milk and canned goods in order to consume foods that were not spoiled, Nairn
said.
The man also couldn’t shower because the tub was filled with belongings.
According to Nairn, the man exhibited signs of level 5 hoarding— the
most severe— in which individuals occupy homes that have personal items that stack up to as high as the ceiling and hoard objects that could be anything such as trash, used items or unopened packages.
“We had gone back and forth [on] whether he was truly safe in his home,” Nairn said. “And we know that at the age of 92, if we force someone to leave a place that they had been in for the last 40 years— it was the only place he was connected to— then he would likely die in a facility. We worked as a team to keep him in his home and get him to make the home safer.”
Eventually, the team worked to make his pathways bigger, discard some items from his home and make the space a safe place for him to live.
“The goal was never for him to clean up his entire home, but to make it
safer,” Nairn said. “And so with APS, with our team, with our case managers, we have had the case open now for a couple of years, and he has been able to remain safely in his home.”
Shari Delaney, a U.S. postal inspector who discussed financial scams,
gave various preventative measures on how to avoid being schemed.
With various scams that try to siphon personal information from individuals
via fraudulent telephone calls— such as phony IRS calls demanding money— Delaney said the important thing is to not give out info so compliantly.
Her most important piece of advice: Just say “no.”
“We teach our little kids to do it, but somehow we forget it as we get older,” Delaney said.
Tina Hooks, an L.A. deputy district attorney and one of the panelists
during the presentation, is assigned to the Elder Abuse Section of her department, where she handles cases that involve homicide, neglect and financial
and physical abuse.
Hooks said she is currently assigned to a neglect case that involved
the death of a dependent adult at the hands of her sister. It’s cases like the one she’s working on now that make her adamant in her belief that abuse of any kind is something that should be properly addressed.
“Everyone that is involved in this fight of elder abuse… we work to make sure the crimes and the injustice are taken care of,” she said. “Our concern is not just prosecuting the cases, but making sure there are things in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
