WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, the top Democrat on the Senate Aging Committee, used a hearing today to examine the financial exploitation of seniors and the difficulty of prosecuting family members who exploit and defraud their elderly family members.
“We cannot shy away from holding these perpetrators accountable for their actions,” said McCaskill, a former Jackson County prosecutor. “The fraud and abuse perpetrated on our seniors is absolutely unconscionable. It is really a fairly recent phenomenon that we have started discussing these types of cases in this criminal arena because for far too long they were dismissed as family matters… and financial exploitation cases involving the elderly are very difficult to prosecute. You need competent and trained professionals at every level, from the detectives and mental health professionals all the way up to the [District Attorney]’s office.”
McCaskill addressed the difficulty of prosecuting cases of senior financial abuse, especially by a family member, saying: “This is the constant refrain that families hear from law enforcement – there’s no gun, there’s not blood on the street, there’s no pressure from the sergeant or from the head of detectives to close the cases, this isn’t a statistic that’s generally tracked. There’s very little to get the law enforcement community engaged other than a prosecutor who feels pressure from either their own compass or some outward source. So what would be the thing that we could do that most light a fire under local law enforcement and state DAs?”
Page Ulrey, the Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the Elder Abuse team in King County, Washington, addressed that issue: “Many of these cases stop when that message is heard in the community that prosecutors are not going to prosecute the case. [Adult Protective Services] doesn’t bother referring to law enforcement, law enforcement doesn’t bother investigating, and the public doesn’t bother reporting. So having a prosecutor who is stepping up and saying ‘we will take on this issue’ is crucial to it being addressed properly.”
McCaskill began the hearing by thanking her friend and colleague, Chairman Susan Collins, saying: “If a year ago I had been approached in the hallway by one of those pesky people with a microphone, and I were asked, ‘if the Democrats were to lose control of the Senate, and you were to take over as a ranking member… who would you pick for your Chairman?’ I would have said, without hesitation—my friend, my mentor, and my role model—Susan Collins.”
The hearing’s other witnesses included Philip Marshall, the grandson of the late Brooke Astor—who testified about how his father, Anthony Marshall, mistreated his mother and mismanaged her assets while she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.