We are recruiting current or former prosecutors, civil attorneys, APS case workers, law enforcement, long-term care ombudsmen, victim advocates, and other professionals who have at least two years of experience working with elder abuse victims. Participants will be interviewed about victim reluctance to prosecute or take other legal action and how such cases are and should be handled. Interviews will be conducted through Zoom, be recorded, and last approximately one hour. To maintain confidentiality, recordings will be deleted after transcription, data will be securely stored, and participants' identities will be masked in any resulting publications. As a token of appreciation, we are offering a $25 Amazon gift card to each participant. More detailed information is available in the Informed Consent Form.
To volunteer or to find out more about this study, email Catheryn Koss at koss@csus.edu or call (916) 278-4341
At least one out of 10 community-dwelling older adults in the U.S. are victims of elder abuse each year. Although the media tends to focus on scams and fraud carried out by strangers, the majority of elder abuse is committed by spouses, adult children, and other close relatives. The fact that elder abuse victims and perpetrators tend to be related leads many victims to resist or feel ambivalent about criminal prosecution and other legal actions. Some research suggests as many as three-fourths of elder abuse victims do not want their abusers to be prosecuted. Yet, there is little research or guidance on how to respond to elder abuse when the victim resists legal responses.
The aims of this study are to examine:
why many elder abuse victims do not cooperate with prosecution or other legal action;
how decisions are made in cases in which the victim refuses to cooperate;
how professionals who work with victims believe these cases should be handled by prosecutors and others; and
barriers or obstacles that prevent these cases from being handled in a more optimal manner.