Nursing home case prompts abuse probe
THE case of a former agedcare worker who took obscene photos of nursing home residents has been a catalyst for research into elder abuse in Tasmania.
The Tasmania Law Reform Institute recently partnered with researchers from the University of Tasmania’s sociology and health sciences department to look at the issue of elder abuse — why it is underreported and how to prevent it.
It was revealed last week by the Council for the Ageing that the number of Tasmanians aged over 65 suffering from emotional, physical, financial, social or sexual abuse could be as high as 10,000.
Law Reform Institute director Terese Henning said preliminary research uncovered a problem around institutional responses to elder abuse.
“This is something that really needs to be unpicked and understood,” she said.
“When you have older people who are frail, vulnerable and who would rather engage in voluntary euthanasia than go into a home for the elderly — there is something seriously wrong with our care facilities.”
Associate Professor Henning said while elder abuse was under-reported, elder sexual abuse was even more so.
“There’s a general cultural resistance of the notion that older people might be sexually abused because they are seen as asexual,” she said.
She said questions posed in the institute’s research had been informed by a court case.
Former aged-care worker Adam Matthew Pettit will spend five years on the state’s sex offender register after admitting to taking obscene and degrading mobile phone “selfies” alongside elderly residents at a Hobart nursing home.
Pettit, 32, pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing a prohibited visual recording and one count of distributing a prohibited visual recording, relating to a course of conduct committed in his workplace between July and August 2015.
In February, Magistrate Glenn Hay sentenced Pettit to a wholly suspended term of two months’ imprisonment, plus 100 hours of community service.
A public symposium will be held in November to help the research team.