By Martha Burk
The month of May is almost behind us, and with it the flowers and candy many of us showered on our mothers earlier in the month to mark Mother’s Day. But many older mothers are getting showered with attention of another kind – abuse.
Take the case of Ruth, an 89-year-old woman who was in fairly good health when she entered an Iowa nursing home for physical therapy in 2008. When she left to go home 25 days later, Ruth’s leg was rotting and consumed by gangrene. She died three months later. State and federal officials rightly called it neglect, and fined the nursing home $112,650.
The nursing home owner is of course contesting the ruling. He runs a lobbying organization and is complaining about the fine to Iowa legislators, accusing the inspections department of “flogging” nursing homes and blocking seniors’ access to care by imposing huge fines.
Ruth’s case, highlighted in “Elder Abuse: A Women’s Issue,” the annual Mother’s Day report from the Older Women’s League (OWL), is by no means an isolated one. Domestic and institutional elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation cause serious harm to anywhere from 500,000 to 5 million individuals in the United States every year. Females make up approximately 66 percent of the victims. That means up to 3 million older women are battered, beaten, swindled, or neglected by relatives and so-called caregivers.
Martha Burk is the author of “Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It,” just out from Scribner. She is director, Corporate Accountability Project, National Council of Women’s Organizations. www.womensorganizations.org. Distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.
Abridged
-----------------------------------------------
Click for Updates, More Cases and Resources
Search Right Col/Labels for More Posts/Resources
No comments:
Post a Comment