Elderly Australians are being neglected and abused by those who are closest to them. Susan Chenery finds that the financial abuse of older Australians very often begins at home.
Janet Mackozdi, 77, died of hypothermia in a shipping container at Mount Lloyd, Tasmania in 2010. With dementia and in deteriorating health, she had been in the care of her daughter, Jassy Anglin, a nurse, and son-in-law, Michael Anglin, a disability support worker. A court would find that the couple had rejected outside offers of medical help, isolated her from her GP and refused offers of a place in a nursing home, leaving her unable to get help, and told her bank not to inquire into her finances. The court found they had spent threequarters of her money, including selling her flat. Had Janet received the proper care, the court found, she could have had “plenty of life in front of her”.
This was, said Council on the Ageing Tasmania Chief Executive Sue Leitch, “a classic case of elder abuse”.
“The major type of elder abuse is financial,” says Brisbane solicitor Brian Herd, who specialises in elder law. “The reality is that most of it is undetected and it is massive. It is so easy: you get the password and you are in.”
Brian believes that financial abuse of the elderly is motivated by two primary factors: greed and control. “They go together. It is difficult to abuse an older person unless you control their finances. You need to have them under your control, isolating them, keeping them out of contact with the outside world. In the anonymity of the internet, it is very difficult to identify it.”
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