Monday, April 16, 2007

Business as Usual for Elder Abuse

The weekend is over so we focus on the daily killing, abusing,exploitation of our elders once more.

We applaud the aggressive posture of authorities in the Riverside killing of an elder over the weekend.

When my father Dr. Fernandez died as a collateral victim of elder abuse , the attitude here was that they are old and were going to die anyways, so why investigate?

Catherine C. McNamee a Social Science Analyst at the National Institute of Justice in Attitudes Hinder Investigations puts it more eloquently than I ever could.

"Researchers also identified a propensity for medical examiners and coroners to
exhibit ageism—a belief that focusing on nursing home deaths was “a waste of their time and resources…because of the poor health status of most nursing home residents… [who] would die anyway.”[8] These beliefs are major impediments to improvements in the forensic identification of elder deaths".
article by Ray Fernandez

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