State’s elder-abuse cases rise, remain difficult to prosecute
SANFORD — In a hospital bed, Lillian Moses, 95, was wheeled into the courtroom of Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr.
The judge asked about her grandson, Thomas Keefe White, who is charged with physically abusing and neglecting her.
They used to live together, but she was moved to a hospital, then a long-term care facility, after authorities discovered in January that she had a broken leg, bed sores and an infection.
White had hit her, she told investigators in January, and although she was bedridden, he had left her alone for several days at a time.
He was careful, she said, to leave her a bottle of water, some crackers and Ensure, according to his arrest warrant.
After the May 13 hearing, White’s lawyer said White did not abuse Moses, adding that she made those allegations while she
was on medication that had left her confused.
The judge asked Moses where she wants to live now: She could stay in the nursing facility, where she’s cared for by aides, or she could move back home and have White, who is free on bond, take care of her while he awaits trial.
“I just want to go home,” she told the judge.
Moses is not the first elderly person who has asked to be put back in the care of someone who’s accused of abusing her, Lester said.
No federal agency keeps detailed, comprehensive national data on the number of elderly people who are abused and neglected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but dozens of social service and government agencies track what happens on the state and local level.
In Florida, the number of verified cases of elder abuse and neglect has climbed 74 percent since 2011, according to the Florida Department of Children and Families.
In 2015, the statewide total was 2,525.
More than 800 people have been charged with elder abuse and neglect in Florida in the past five years, according to the Office of State Courts Administrator.
More than 370 have been convicted or sentenced.
Nearly 90 percent of the substantiated cases of elder abuse and neglect happened at home, according to a 2004 survey by the University of Kentucky that was conducted on behalf of the National Center on Elder Abuse.
One-third of the abusers were the children of the victims, researchers found. In 53 percent of those cases, the abuser was a woman. Most were in their 40s.
In Brooklyn, the district attorney’s office evaluated its elder abuse cases in 2014 and found that most abusers either suffered from a drug or alcohol addiction or suffered from a mental illness, according to Arlene Markarian, bureau chief of its domestic violence and elder abuse unit.
Laura Moody, who leads the elder abuse and economic crimes division of the State Attorney’s Office in Brevard County, said elder abuse and neglect cases are difficult to prosecute. Often the victims have close emotional ties to the suspects, don’t want to get them in trouble and is afraid of retaliation.
“They’d rather be subjected to abuse at home,” Moody said, than be sent to a nursing facility, where they fear they’ll be abandoned.
Other victims cannot report abuse because they can no longer talk or have cognition problems, she said.
“Many times we are their voice,” she said.
Moses, the elderly woman in the hospital bed, was taken from her home in Altamonte Springs to a hospital on Jan. 29.
She told authorities then that she did not want to go back home, according to her grandson’s arrest warrant.
He had left her home alone for four days, she said, and sometimes hit her when he got angry.
According to Assistant State Attorney Lori Rausch, medical personnel discovered Moses’ broken leg, another break that was in the process of healing, six severe bed sores, an infection and symptoms of dehydration. White was arrested and the judge ordered him to have no contact with his grandmother.But several weeks later White’s attorney, Denis Quintana, asked the judge to lift that no-contact order.
That was the reason Moses was wheeled into the courtroom May 13. At that hearing, she gave a different version of events.
Her grandson had never hit her, she told the judge. He took care of her, she said, and took her to the beauty parlor. “He even bought me pitted dates, which I love.”
She got bed sores, she said, because she was supposed to change positions every two hours but did not. “That’s my fault,” she said. White did not testify. He holds power of attorney for his grandmother and is her health-care surrogate, Quintana said.
At the end of the hearing, the judge gave Moses what she wanted.
But he ordered White to first hire home health aides to care for her during the day and ordered White to stay home at night so Moses would not be alone.
“I am confronted with a lady who’s 96 years old [sic] and wants to go home,” the judge said. “I’m splitting the baby in the middle.”
In Florida, the number of verified cases of elder abuse and neglect has climbed 74 percent since 2011, according to the Florida Department of Children and Families. In 2015, the statewide total was 2,525.