District Attorney Gascón Launches Citywide Elder
Abuse Prevention Campaign
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 8, 2011
CONTACT:
Erica Terry Derryck, DA Gascón’s Office, (415) 553-1167
ADA Seth Steward, DA Gascón’s Office, (415) 553-1014
SFDA and Institute on Aging Team Up to Increase Reporting of Abuse
of Growing Senior Population
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – District Attorney George Gascón announced today
the launch of a citywide, multilingual elder abuse prevention campaign
in partnership with the Institute on Aging and the San Francisco
Elder Abuse Forensic Center.
“Making sure that the public knows how to access support and services
for seniors in need, is an important step in the fight against elder
abuse,” said District Attorney George Gascón. “We have marshaled
resources from local and federal sources to produce this campaign
because keeping our seniors out of harm’s way is the responsibility
of the entire community. With San Francisco’s growing population
of seniors living on their own, we have to take these important
steps to protect them from predators.”
San Francisco has one of the highest concentrations of seniors living
independently, and is home to an increasingly aging population.
In fact, San Francisco’s elderly population –people aged 60 and
over – is expected to grow up to 100 percent by the year 2020. These
older adults include a high concentration of non-English speaking
seniors, a higher than average percentage of individuals with disabilities,
and persons living with AIDS.
The provocative new campaign ads feature the tag line, “Our Golden
Years Shouldn’t Be Black and Blue,” and include statistics about
the growing rate of elder abuse. The public service ads offer step-by-step
instructions for reporting elder abuse.
The public service campaign will be concentrated in transit shelters
and on MUNI buses over the next eight weeks. Specifically, it will
be comprised of 150 interior bus cards, 60 bus tails and 50 bus
shelter ads. Additionally, campaign posters will be provided to
public and non-profit partners for wider distribution. The ads are
being run in English, Spanish and Chinese.
The total cost of the two-month, citywide campaign is less than
$20,000. Funding for the campaign is being provided by the Institute
on Aging and a $300,000, two-year grant from the United States Department
of Justice that was secured by the San Francisco District Attorney’s
Office in 2009 to enhance its elder abuse education, prevention
and prosecution efforts.
The public service campaign being launched is part of the San Francisco
District Attorney’s Office’s ongoing work to prevent and prosecute
crimes against seniors. The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office
handles elder abuse cases involving both financial crimes and physical
abuse against seniors. In 2010, the District Attorney’s Office handled
81 cases of financial and physical elder abuse, conducted 17 outreach
seminars with seniors and seven training sessions related to elder
physical and financial abuse.
To best serve seniors impacted by these two distinct forms of crime,
District Attorney Gascón recently streamlined the handling of elder
abuse cases by the District Attorney’s Office as part of an office-wide
reorganization. Physical abuse cases involving seniors will be handled
by the Family Violence Unit and financial abuse cases, which include
a range of crimes from mortgage and real estate fraud to annuity
scams, will be handled by the Economic Crimes Unit of the White
Collar Division. The shift will increase the District Attorney’s
Office’s capacity to handle crimes against seniors.
Additionally, since 2008 the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office,
The Institute on Aging, the San Francisco Police Department and
the San Francisco Department of Aging and Adult Services, a division
of the Human Services Agency, which operates Adult Protective Services
(APS) for the county have been partners in the San Francisco Elder
Forensic Center. With a combination of private and City funding
secured by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the
Institute on Aging, the Elder Forensic Center brings these agencies
together to prevent delays and gaps in service coordination, evidence
collection and criminal investigation that could otherwise negatively
effect the outcome for victims of abuse.
The Elder Forensic Center allows San Francisco to leverage the resources
of these key agencies to address the unique challenges and characteristics
of criminal and non-criminal cases of elder abuse and neglect to
ensure that seniors in need receive rapid access to services and
prompt resolution to their cases. Since its inception, the San Francisco
Elder Abuse Forensic Center has reviewed approximately 300 complex
cases of elder and dependent adult abuse, doubling the number of
referrals to the District Attorney’s Office’s.
Elder abuse is a unique crime in that it often involves a senior
being victimized repeatedly by a family member or caregiver. It
is estimated that over 61 percent of elder abuse cases, the abusers
are family members of the victim, 37 percent of abusers are adult
children, 13 percent are spouses and other relatives account for
11 percent of abuse. 90 percent of reported cases involve repeat
offenses. Yet these statistics give only a glimpse of the magnitude
of the problem. San Francisco’s Adult Protective Services estimates
that a majority of elder abuse cases go unreported.
In California, the Attorney General estimates that 200,000 seniors
are victims of abuse each year. Nationally, elder abuse may involve
as many as 5 million seniors, with 84 percent of all cases going
unreported.
The newly launched campaign encourages all people to report any
suspected abuse against a senior. This can be done anonymously by
calling 415-355-6700.
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