By Heather Cassell (San Francisco)

Elder abuse, especially financial elder abuse, is on the rise as Baby Boomers enter their golden years and it is threatening to become an increasing problem, according to experts who are organizing a variety of events around the U.S. in May for Elder Abuse Awareness Week during Older American’s Month. Adult Protective Services received a total of 565,747 reported cases of elder abuse for individuals of all ages from 50 states, including Guam and the District of Columbia in 2004, the most recent statistics available. The agency investigated 461,135 reports of which 191,908 reports of elder abuse were substantiated. This represented a 16 percent increase from the 2000 survey.

Alarmed by APS findings, the Elder Financial Protection Network works to prevent financial abuse of elders through training legal and financial professionals in combination with public education and community outreach.

Today, with 39 million individuals over the age of 65 currently living in the U.S. and projections of 62 million Americans who will be 65 or older in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and elder financial abuse on the rise, EFPN’s founder and CEO Jenefer Duane, who formed EFPN with a group of visionary bankers, is committed more than ever to protect the country’s seniors.

The harm caused to elderly victims of financial abuse can cause significant health and safety related issues at the least, deadly at the most, according to elder abuse experts. The mortality rate for elder victims of financial abuse is estimated three times higher than non-victims with an increased likelihood of premature institutionalization. “We can’t allow their resources to be exploited, costing them their hard earned retirement and their quality of life that they saved for and envisioned for themselves,” Duane says, who wants seniors to be “savvy consumers” and empowered to protect themselves and report suspected abuse.

Most often, victims of elder abuse are women, according to senior advocates. Impacting the issue, many financial elder abuse cases go unreported every year and only a few of the reported cases are ever investigated—even fewer cases are ever prosecuted, according to law enforcement and legal elder abuse experts. “We report domestic violence and child abuse, now we must report elder abuse,” Duane says. “The response should be the same.”

Employees of legal and financial organizations are legally required to report suspected elder abuse. It wasn’t easy bringing attention to financial elder abuse more than a decade ago and it still isn’t today, Duane says. But today she isn’t about to give up as she almost did in the beginning when financial institutions made excuses not to participate in the program due to fears of invasion of privacy rights to potential legal liabilities, Duane says.

Today, with increasing incidents of elder financial abuse many banks and other organizations that work with seniors are taking the Bank of Marin’s being “good corporate citizens” and the Novato Community Bank, now Circle Bank’s, “every bank should do this,” approach that established EFPN as a statewide senior advocacy organization in 2000. Nine years later the organization is stronger than ever with nearly a $400,000 annual operating budget, in spite of a 40 percent decline in funding last year, Duane says. She is pleased that the work she is doing with legal and financial professionals to strengthen certain network infrastructures and answer legal questions that remain fractured or unknown is helping to protect seniors—especially in California, Texas and Florida, the states with the largest retiring populations respectively.

“Even though we can’t cure problems quickly we are moving at the speed of light to make this happen—especially in California” says Duane, who gathered an estimated 230 senior advocates who signed onto a proclamation supporting the Elder Abuse Victims Act and passed the Elder Justice Act in March at the EFPN’s sixth annual “Call to Action” summit in San Francisco. Duane applauded the signing of the proclamation, as a sign of “how the community is coming together to protect seniors from financial abuse,” she says, hoping to present the signed proclamation to Pelosi sometime this year. “The network is building, the passion is building and we are going to fight back,” says Duane.