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Elder Abuse
The National Center on Elder Abuse for the Administration for Children and Families and the Administration on Aging, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, conducted the first National Elder Abuse Incidence Study. The study estimates that a total of 449,924 elderly persons aged 60 and over experienced abuse and/or neglect in domestic settings in 1996. Of this total, 16% were reported to and substantiated by adult protective services agencies, but the remaining 84% were not reported to APS. From these figures, one can conclude that for every reported incident of elder abuse or neglect, approximately five go unreported. The standard error suggests that between 1.7 and 9 times as many elders were abused and neglected and not reported to APS agencies as were reported to and substantiated by APS agencies.
The study also offers the following facts:
- Women are abused at a higher rate than men after accounting for their larger proportion in the aging population.
- The nation's oldest individuals (80 years and older) are abused and neglected at two to three times their proportion of the elderly population.
- In almost 90 percent of the elder abuse and neglect incidents with a known perpetrator, the perpetrator is a family member and two-thirds of the perpetrators are adult children or spouses.
- According to data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in September 1997, persons age 50 or older made up:
- 30 percent of the population
- 12 percent of murder victims
- 7 percent of serious violent crime victims
- Nationally, nearly 70 percent of adult protective service agencies' annual caseloads involve elder abuse.
- The National Center on Elder Abuse estimates the incidence of specific types of elder maltreatment in 1994 as follows: physical abuse (15.7 percent); sexual abuse (0.04 percent); emotional abuse (7.3 percent); neglect (58.5 percent); financial exploitation (12.3 percent); all other types (5.1 percent); and unknown (0.06 percent).
- Among murders of victims over 60, their offspring were the killers in 42 percent of the cases. Spouses were the perpetrators in 24 percent of family murders of persons over 60.
Sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice; National Center on Elder Abuse; The National Center on Elder Abuse, American Public Human Services Association; The National Elder Abuse Incidence Study: Final Report. Washington, D.C.: Administration for Children and Families & Administration on Aging, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Office for Victims of Crime
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