A Wall Street Journal blogger posted a brief article on 14 June 2012 entitled “Financial Abuse of Elderly: Getting Worse.” (link below) Stated in this article, “…medical professionals can play an important role when they are trained to spot and report the warning signs of elderly investment fraud or financial exploitation. The Investor Protection Trust has trained 3,000 medical professionals so far to spot the impaired mental capacity that can leave older adults vulnerable to financial abuse.”
And that’s all well and good but, all due respect to the article’s author and those conducting the survey, the answer is just not that simple. In fact, the matter of vulnerability is addressed at length in our documentary, “Last Will and Embezzlement” (directed by Deborah Louise Robinson).
Mental impairment is far from the only reason an elderly person gets financially abused. Filmmaker Pamela Glasner’s mother did not have any such impairment. She had a whole different set of issues.
“My parents,” Glasner explains, talking about the neighborhood in New York City, where she grew up, “did what most of the parents did: they waited for their kids to graduate and then they moved to Florida.” But eventually, what started out as an escape and a dream became a prison and a nightmare.
Glasner's mother, an elderly woman of 89, had two children, but they lived 130 miles and 1300 miles away; the love of her life, her 90-year-old husband, whom she’d been with quite literally for 80 years, was permanently moved into a nursing home, leaving her suddenly on her own; a bout with glaucoma left her unable to drive. She was a proud and intelligent woman with a past history of being what Glasner describes as “the best business person my brother and I had ever known.” Then Glasner goes on to say, “She never let on that there was a problem and there was no reason for either my brother or me to presume to keep a watchful eye on Mom’s finances or on her choice of associates. We’d never been involved with financial abuse and had no notion of what was happening until it was too late.” Ethel Glasner was not impaired — she was 89 and lonely and dependent.
This is not to say that what the Investor Protection Trust is doing is a bad idea, but there are probably as many ways to financially exploit the elderly as there are elderly people to exploit. Vulnerability comes in all shapes and sizes and it’s vital that we, as a society, start learning what those shapes and sizes look like, and what the signs are, and stop assuming that dementia is the only cause.
“Vulnerability is absolutely NOT limited to mental impairment,” Glasner insists, “And it is, in my humble opinion, dangerous to assume that diminished capacity is the perpetrator’s only – or even primary – avenue in.”
WSJ Article:
http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2012/06/14/financial-abuse-of-elderly-getting-worse/
Pamela S. K. Glasner is a published author and a filmmaker. More information about “Last Will and Embezzlement” and Ms. Glasner can be found at www.lastwillandembezzlement.com, http://youtu.be/WJCDQpqHPEQ, and http://tinyurl.com/2cn8bpo.
Copyright by Pamela S. K. Glasner © 2012, All Rights Reserved
Tags: Don Larsen, Wimbledon, Tour de France, World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim, gas prices, Natalie Coughlin, Colorado Springs, Metal hip implants, Facebook stock, Student loan rate extension passed, Mickey Rooney, Last Will and Embezzlement, Pamela Glasner, Deborah Louise Robinson, elder exploitation, elder abuse, financial exploitation, embezzlement, Starjack Entertainment
And that’s all well and good but, all due respect to the article’s author and those conducting the survey, the answer is just not that simple. In fact, the matter of vulnerability is addressed at length in our documentary, “Last Will and Embezzlement” (directed by Deborah Louise Robinson).
Mental impairment is far from the only reason an elderly person gets financially abused. Filmmaker Pamela Glasner’s mother did not have any such impairment. She had a whole different set of issues.
“My parents,” Glasner explains, talking about the neighborhood in New York City, where she grew up, “did what most of the parents did: they waited for their kids to graduate and then they moved to Florida.” But eventually, what started out as an escape and a dream became a prison and a nightmare.
Glasner's mother, an elderly woman of 89, had two children, but they lived 130 miles and 1300 miles away; the love of her life, her 90-year-old husband, whom she’d been with quite literally for 80 years, was permanently moved into a nursing home, leaving her suddenly on her own; a bout with glaucoma left her unable to drive. She was a proud and intelligent woman with a past history of being what Glasner describes as “the best business person my brother and I had ever known.” Then Glasner goes on to say, “She never let on that there was a problem and there was no reason for either my brother or me to presume to keep a watchful eye on Mom’s finances or on her choice of associates. We’d never been involved with financial abuse and had no notion of what was happening until it was too late.” Ethel Glasner was not impaired — she was 89 and lonely and dependent.
This is not to say that what the Investor Protection Trust is doing is a bad idea, but there are probably as many ways to financially exploit the elderly as there are elderly people to exploit. Vulnerability comes in all shapes and sizes and it’s vital that we, as a society, start learning what those shapes and sizes look like, and what the signs are, and stop assuming that dementia is the only cause.
“Vulnerability is absolutely NOT limited to mental impairment,” Glasner insists, “And it is, in my humble opinion, dangerous to assume that diminished capacity is the perpetrator’s only – or even primary – avenue in.”
WSJ Article:
http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2012/06/14/financial-abuse-of-elderly-getting-worse/
Pamela S. K. Glasner is a published author and a filmmaker. More information about “Last Will and Embezzlement” and Ms. Glasner can be found at www.lastwillandembezzlement.com, http://youtu.be/WJCDQpqHPEQ, and http://tinyurl.com/2cn8bpo.
Copyright by Pamela S. K. Glasner © 2012, All Rights Reserved
Tags: Don Larsen, Wimbledon, Tour de France, World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim, gas prices, Natalie Coughlin, Colorado Springs, Metal hip implants, Facebook stock, Student loan rate extension passed, Mickey Rooney, Last Will and Embezzlement, Pamela Glasner, Deborah Louise Robinson, elder exploitation, elder abuse, financial exploitation, embezzlement, Starjack Entertainment
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