Hahn Vows to Investigate, Prosecute Abusers of Elderly

WEST HILLS —  “The test of a people is how it behaves toward the old.”

Quoting the late scholar Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Los Angeles City Atty. James Hahn announced Tuesday the formation of an Elder Crimes Unit to investigate and prosecute elder abuse.

Speaking to members of the Senior Shalom Club at the West Valley Jewish Community Center, Hahn called senior abuse “a hidden problem that must be brought out in the open and then eliminated.”

“A civilized city can have no tolerance for these types of crimes,” he said.

Hahn said the unit, which is scheduled to begin operating next month, will provide a “coordinated approach” to prosecuting “significantly underreported crimes.”

About 370,000 city residents are 65 or older, a figure that will double in the next 30 years, he said. Experts estimate that 4% of all seniors are abused, he said.

The city attorney’s office established an Elder Abuse Task Force in February to cross-train personnel from various agencies, including Adult Protective Services and the Los Angeles Police Department. In addition, the city attorney’s office has adopted a “no drop” policy for elder abuse, which means it will proceed with cases even when victims recant or are uncooperative.

The task force was instrumental in persuading the Social Security Administration to refer fraudulent benefit check cases to the city attorney’s office, Hahn said.

“We hear about [elder abuse] occasionally when we entertain at nursing homes,” said Betty Goldstein, a 20-year Chatsworth resident and member of the Senior Shalom Club. “I don’t think the problem is that great.”

But Yuli Wang, project director at the Bernardi Multipurpose Senior Center in the Van Nuys Civic Center complex, strongly supports the new unit.

Wang, a physician in Beijing who emigrated to the United States in 1994, is pursuing a doctorate in aging studies at the UCLA School of Public Health.

She sees the greatest potential for abuse in the handling of seniors’ finances when a caregiver--sometimes a child or grandchild, sometimes a nonrelative--controls a senior’s checkbook.

“Eighty [percent] to 90% of the elderly hide this type of problem,” Wang said. “They are too afraid to admit their confusion, or to tell on a relative.”