Elder Abuse Victims Suffer in Silence
By Scott Fornek, Michael Sneed and Amanda Beeler, Staff Reporters
Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, December 16, 2001
Ruth Robertson was bilked out of thousands of dollars by a live-in caregiver who forced her to spend her days sitting on a portable toilet in her living room.
Her mind a prisoner to dementia, the 96-year-old widow was living in a North Lake Shore Drive condo littered with garbage, decaying food and soiled underwear. Robertson was dirty and eating cereal with spoiled milk when a social worker found her and called the police.
"You have a situation here where the senior citizen is totally at the mercy of the caregiver, and the caregiver not only rips off this 96-year-old woman financially, but puts her in conditions of living that are almost unspeakable," said Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine.
As the nation grows older, crimes like this—that target the elderly, stealing their money, their dignity and sometimes their lives—have become alarmingly commonplace, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found. And their numbers are only expected to grow as the baby boom generation settles into old age.
Consider Alexander O. Ramlose, 95, and George Enquist, 85, who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, allegedly taken in by a Northwest Side lawyer they hired to handle their finances in their final days.
Or Floris Harter, 88, left penniless by a nurse's aide she met while recuperating in a hospital.
There's Lela Moreno, 88, of Downstate Marshall, killed by her 85-year-old husband, who said he was trying to end her pain.
And Pauline Kazmierski, 69, a Polish immigrant who couldn't read English and ended up losing her home after being cheated out of the deed by her own son.
And an 85-year-old Bridgeport widow cheated out of more than $4,500 by a furnace repairman who conned her into paying for ''carbon monoxide removal.''
The crimes that authorities bundle together and call "elder abuse" target people at their weakest—old, alone, infirm and sometimes just too trusting.
"The minute they know you are a widow and alone … they will try to take advantage of you," said the Bridgeport woman.
No one is immune.
"This type of crime cuts across all racial and ethnic lines and all parts of the city and suburbs," said Lori G. Levin, supervisor of the seniors and persons with disabilities division in Devine's office.
The suffering is often in silence. Unlike the Robertson case, which ended with live-in caregiver Janice Watson's conviction and three-year prison sentence for financial exploitation and criminal neglect, experts say they think that most elder-abuse cases go undetected—largely because the aged often are unable or unwilling to seek help.
"The two scariest words to a senior citizen are 'nursing home,'" said Tim McCann, the Kendall County state's attorney. "What they are afraid of is that we, or their family members, may determine they are unable to take care of themselves and put them in a home.''
Key obstacles
Illinois is hailed as a national leader in combatting elder abuse, having launched one of the early efforts to deal with the problem a decade ago.
But serious obstacles remain to ensuring that seniors' golden years aren't tarnished, the Sun-Times found in reviewing hundreds of public documents and conducting hundreds of interviews with experts in the field, victims of elder abuse, people convicted of such crimes and law enforcement officials. The newspaper surveyed top police officials in 267 municipalities in the Chicago area as well as in the five largest cities Downstate, and contacted prosecutors in all of Illinois' 102 counties, and found:
A lack of coordination between law enforcement and the primary state agency that's supposed to deal with elder abuse—the Illinois Department on Aging. Police chiefs in the Chicago area and prosecutors statewide said they largely have little contact with the agency. Many said they don't even know enough about the agency to rate the job it does.
Few police departments with officers trained to investigate elder-abuse crimes or work with seniors.
A lack of basic information even to measure how widespread the problem is.
"This survey shows that services are fragmented at best, nonexistent in too many communities and completely inadequate to meet this ever-growing crime problem," said Jan Carroll, a former banking executive who, with Dr. Steven Fox and FBI supervisory agent Elaine Smith, is a cofounder of Financial Crimes Services, a Chicago company formed to help the elderly avoid being financially exploited.
A growing problem
No one can say just how widespread elder abuse is in Illinois—in large part because law enforcement agencies don't even agree on how to define the crime. But key measures indicate it's sharply on the rise.
When Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy took office in 1978, his agency had two cases of financial exploitation of the elderly it was handling. Now, his office handles about 35 times that number at any given time. Annual complaints to the Illinois Department on Aging, which numbered 1,082 in 1990, were up to 7,372 last year—though state officials say the actual number could be more than 10 times higher because of the reluctance or inability of victims to report what happened.
The state agency estimated two years ago that the number of cases of abuse, neglect or financial exploitation of elderly people—not including those living in nursing homes—could actually be as high as 76,000.
By that measure—which was based on projections developed by advocates in the field—one of every 25 Illinois residents 60 and over could be affected.
''It is a very serious, growing problem,'' said Murphy, who points to improved health care as a key reason. ''Twenty-five years ago, these people would die. But now they are living longer."
And facing a host of additional medical problems, said Murphy, noting, "This whole dementia thing creates a group of people who can't fend for themselves."
That was what Murphy says happened with 99-year-old Mary Sherlock, who was stricken with Alzheimer's disease.
A stranger in his 20s knocked on her door in Oak Park in the early 1990s. In short order, he had talked Sherlock into giving him title to her $950,000 summer home on Lake Geneva.
''A guy went up to her house with a Baker's Square pie, and she deeded him the house,'' said Murphy, whose office got the home back for Sherlock.
'What do they do?'
The primary responsibility for dealing with elder abuse in Illinois belongs to the state Department on Aging, whose efforts mostly drew a blank from the police chiefs and prosecutors the Sun-Times surveyed. More than two-thirds of them said they were so unfamiliar with what the agency does that they didn't feel they could even rate its performance.
''They must be terribly understaffed or underfunded because I don't know what police or prosecution assistance they have made available to anyone,'' said Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons. ''Where are they at, and what do they do?''
Unlike the Department of Children and Family Services, which handles cases of abuse and neglect against children, the Department on Aging doesn't have its own investigators. Instead, it contracts with 45 senior centers and other social service agencies that conduct investigations and work to end abusive situations—either by referring them to law enforcement or seeking civil or social service remedies.
Few cases handled by the state, though, end up being referred to the authorities and prosecuted. The Department on Aging got 7,372 reports of elder abuse last year.
It determined abuse took place in 4,275 of them. But county prosecutors throughout Illinois—some of them able to provide precise counts, others able to offer only estimates—said they handled fewer than 950 cases statewide last year, the Sun-Times survey found.
To prosecute, or not
In southeastern Illinois, St. Clair County State's Attorney Robert Haida said he files charges in about 25 cases of elder abuse a year in a county whose population is 256,082, but suspects there are more cases he never hears about. Haida said the senior citizen organization that works with the state Department on Aging in his county isn't as concerned with prosecuting abusers as he is.
''It's not that they don't want police involvement," Haida said, "but that is not their focus. Their focus is to serve the elderly, to make whatever situation they find themselves in better…. If Johnny is taking advantage of Grandma, they want to take Grandma out of the home, not arrest Johnny.''
Kathleen Quinn, chief of the Department on Aging's bureau of elder rights, said there's sometimes good reason for that, but agreed that her agency needs to improve relationships with police and prosecutors.
''I think your survey points out we need to do more awareness," Quinn said, "of who we are and how we can work together.''
Overall, she said, ''We've done a lot, but we've got a long way to go."
'People don't step forward'
It's too late to help Ruth Robertson. The retired secretary died in February in a Lincoln Park nursing home.
The paid caregiver who was convicted in Robertson's case, Janice Watson, 38, is now on parole and declined to talk with a reporter.
The social worker who discovered Robertson's plight two years ago said she thinks the "people who are working on this are doing a diligent effort," but there needs to be more of "a community effort." Annette Jungheim, a private geriatric-care manager, launched the investigation into how Robertson was treated and later became her legal guardian. Jungheim said she thinks the "really neat old gal" died feeling safe, cared for and with little memory of the abuse. But Jungheim said she'll never forget it.
"Every human-dignity issue was denied to this woman," she said. "Her situation when I found her was totally appalling.
"And I see this at least once a week, something like this. It is terrible, it's sickening, it's disgusting. And people don't step forward…. A lot of people just don't want to get involved."
In preparing these stories on elder abuse, the Chicago Sun-Times surveyed police departments in Chicago, all 266 of its incorporated suburbs and the five largest Downstate Illinois cities, as well as sheriffs in the six-county region who handle unincorporated areas and suburbs without police departments. In addition, the newspaper contacted the state's attorneys' offices in all 102 Illinois counties.
Eighty-nine state's attorneys' offices responded, or 87.3 percent. The response rate for the police surveys was 94.6 percent—241 police departments handling 263 jurisdictions.
The interviews were conducted by Sun-Times reporters Becky Beaupre, Amanda Beeler, Scott Fornek, Chris Fusco, Art Golab, Kate Grossman, Curtis Lawrence, Nancy Moffett, Tim Novak, Abdon Pallasch and Dan Rozek.
