Each year an estimated 5 million, or 1 in 10, older Americans are victims of elder abuse, neglect or exploitation. For every case of elder abuse or neglect reported, as many as 24 more cases go unreported. Of the unreported cases involving financial abuse alone, each year elderly Americans lose an estimated $2.6 billion dollars. Sadly, most of the victims spent their adult lives raising families and caring for others, yet in the twilight of their own lives they lose funds that could be used for basic needs such as housing, food and medical care.
In today’s fast-paced society, with an overloaded criminal justice system, victims of elder abuse struggle to find sympathy or anyone eager to take up their cause. Vulnerable victims do not represent a strong voting bloc or feature photogenic victims good for fund-raising. Instead, they are “special victims.” That means that due to diminished mental or physical capacity they need extra time, patience and compassion on the part of investigators to prepare for prosecution of offenders. Truth be told, elderly victims often wind up being victimized twice: once by smooth con men or brutal attackers, and again by the system(s) that are supposed to protect them.
That’s where the North Georgia Elder Abuse Task Force Foundation comes in. It’s funded by the generosity of private donors to support the North Georgia Elder Abuse Task Force (NGEATF) itself. The team is comprised of active law enforcement leaders, prosecutors, public health professionals, government regulators and members of affiliated organizations with a passion to protect the elderly. Together they interact with and assist Georgia local law enforcement agencies by providing professional technical assistance to develop prosecutable criminal elder abuse cases, recover stolen funds to return to senior victims and to educate the public concerning elder abuse.
Encouraging, educating and supporting law enforcement and criminal justice agencies as they ferret out cases of elder abuse, the task force strives to raise general awareness regarding the enormity of the problem. Task force members travel throughout North Georgia distributing pamphlets and addressing law enforcement groups as well as community groups of seniors. Since its inception, it has conducted more than 70 coordinating and training seminars for over 1,200 law enforcement officers and community seminars for over 7000 civilians. It is through these personal interactions that members often learn of new cases of elder abuse that previously went unreported by terrified, embarrassed or intimidated seniors.
While the detection and investigation of cases has been hampered in recent years by everything COVID-related, shrinking police resources and widespread public turmoil, the NGEATF has not been thwarted. Despite the odds, task force members have continued their work and are gaining momentum, Experience they glean from actual elder abuse cases and news media exposure of them has often caught significant public attention. It became the impetus for new laws curtailing unlicensed healthcare facilities, an expanded registry of eldercare workers and reforming treatment of the mentally ill within the Georgia criminal justice system.
For the purpose of stimulating greater law enforcement regulatory focus on elder abuse, the task force conducts an award/recognition program designed to highlight individuals who make extraordinary efforts to protect the elderly. The program is aptly named the Pat King Award of Excellence after a deeply dedicated nurse who strived for years to fight elder abuse statewide, often single-handedly. So far this year Pat King awards and plaques have been presented to several police officers and private citizens who intervened in major fraud cases against elderly victims, stopped thefts in their tracks and recovered tens of thousands of dollars that were returned to victims. Awards have also been presented to Floyd County detectives who, through amazing persistence and boots-on-the-ground police work, uncovered the brutal murder of a 75-year-old woman killed by her grandson who froze the victim’s body and continued to collect her Social Security checks for months. The grandson was arrested and ultimately confessed to the murder and exploitation of his grandmother.
On yet another front, as task force members travel from one area of North Georgia to another, they have begun distributing “scent kits” to be used to locate elderly missing persons. Scent kits are low tech, but effective, kits containing a jar, gauze pads and latex gloves used to collect and store personal scent from elderly victims of dementia who tend to wander aimlessly from their homes and often come to harm. When they have wandered off, police canines sniff the scent sample from the scent kit and track down the victim, hopefully before harm comes to them. In Banks County there have been multiple documented cases wherein “wanderers” have been rescued by sheriff’s deputies far from home only by the use of scent kits provided by the NGEATF.
The bottom line: North Georgia Elder Abuse Task Force volunteers are deeply committed to protecting our elderly citizens— and remains on the move educating the public and rescuing elderly victims.
The author, a former police chief of Marietta and Savannah, chairs the NGEATF awards committee.
