Aging - Bernie Wilson's story of suffering is one of a growing number of elder abuse cases in Oregon
Saturday, January 12, 2008
JESSICA BRUDER
The Oregonian Staff
By the time Bernie Wilson's children wrested their 86-year-old father from his caregivers in 2005, he weighed 111 pounds and "looked like a skeleton from a concentration camp."
The caregivers had moved Wilson from his Lake Oswego home without telling his family and stuffed him into the back of a doublewide in Welches. The retired Tektronix manager who'd taken up long-distance cycling in his 70s was now dirty and hungry, with sunken eyes. His $660,000 life savings was gone.
In 2006, Bernie Wilson died, one of a growing number of Oregonians haunted by neglect and abuse in their final years. Between 2002 and 2005, statewide reports of elder abuse in domestic settings increased 80 percent, from 3,056 to 5,489, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services. Experts expect the trend to continue as the elderly population grows.
Wilson didn't live long enough to see his caregivers brought to justice. In April, Shawn Christopher Mann, 47, was sentenced to two years in prison for aggravated first-degree theft and criminal mistreatment. On Friday, Wilson's three children confronted 53-year-old Patricia Faye Mann, who investigators believe spearheaded the scheme, in Clackamas County Circuit Court.
"While the wheels of justice turned slowly, you and your husband were able to dominate the thinking of an elderly, confused man," Wilson's daughter, Melody Miller, 63, of Fairview, said in a voice that trembled. "You were even able to rob my dad of his dignity and his ability to pay his own way, but you did not destroy love."
Red-faced and teary, Patricia Mann turned to face Miller and her two brothers, Brian Wilson, 59, of Hillsboro and Brad Wilson, 58, of Canby.
"I'm sorry that you feel I didn't treat your father good, but I did," she told them.
Judge Robert Herndon sentenced Patricia Mann to nearly six years in prison on one count of first-degree aggravated theft and five counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment. He also ordered her to repay $150,000 to Wilson's estate and forbade her from acting as a caregiver for three years after her prison term.
"You're pretty much the nightmare that all of us -- as we think about our parents or ourselves aging --" think about, Herndon said.
SOURCE: The Oregonian
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