The National Institute of Justice has recently awarded two University professors a grant of nearly $300,000 to study patterns of financial abuse of the elderly across the Commonwealth.
Law Prof. Thomas Hafemeister and Psychology Prof. Shelly Jackson were selected to receive the grant for their research proposal to interview persons involved in 240 cases of abuse.
According to Hafemeister, the research will be aimed at better understanding what precipitates financial abuse of the elderly, the risk factors involved and the effectiveness of legal and social mechanisms in responding to the abuse.
He said the existing empirical literature on the problem of financial abuse of elderly persons is very limited.
Hafemeister and Jackson will be focusing on abuse within families rather than institutional environments or more general scam practices.
Both Hafemeister and Jackson agreed that elderly financial abuse cases seem to be on the rise, especially with recent societal changes.
"The older population tends to have more assets now than they did formerly," Hafemeister said. "There's more to be exploited. When you have more assets, there tends to be more temptation."
But such financial abuse is not constrained to wealthy demographics. Jackson said in less affluent families, abusers may obtain power of attorney from their elders. They in turn abuse this power by opening credit card accounts and engaging in other predatory practices, ruining their elders' finances.
"There are many, many cases where elders have nothing, and their families may still take advantage of them," Jackson said.
To investigate the abuse cases, Jackson said the two will conduct interviews with elders involved in documented abuse cases within the Virginia Department of Social Services. Interviews will also be conducted with their caretakers and workers from the Commonwealth's Adult Protective services (APS).
"We're trying to understand the APS response as well," Jackson said. "Part of it is learning about the APS response and learning the best ways to respond."
Hafemeister said the research data will come from a stratified population across different regions of the Commonwealth and in urban, suburban and rural communities.
He added the research will be labor intensive -- with each interview lasting approximately 90 minutes. The two professors are looking to recruit graduate students in related fields to assist on the project.
Hafemeister said the research grant will be for a period of two years.
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