July 20, 2015
South Dakota leaders are analyzing elder abuse. The Chief Justice of South Dakota’s Supreme Court David Gilbertson says the often hidden crimes of elder abuse are becoming bigger problems as more people age. All three branches of government are part of a task force trying to understand who is taking advantage of the state’s aging people, how they’re doing it, and what can be done to prevent and punish elder abuse.
Elder abuse takes many forms, but a discussion about money pierces Steve Mielke.
“I mean, just looking through the slides and what they’re discussing, I could just feel in the pit of my stomach of this is exactly, they’re talking about my dad,” Mielke says.
This year Mielke lost his father after a stroke, but it’s the time leading up to his death that brings Mielke to a conference about elder abuse.
“He had been with an individual for about two years, and we’d seen a steady decline in his spending time with the family and then how his funding and his financial situation had changed drastically – to where he had been selling some land and then how that money had all gone away and just basically had totally changed,” Mielke says.
This is not a unique story.
National experts say physical, emotional, and financial abuse of the elderly is under-reported and under-prosecuted.Abridged
SOURCE: SDPB RADIO
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