Prevent Elder Abuse

How I Spent My Vacation

2010-07-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

No, don’t panic. Summer’s not over yet. The vacation I’m referring to is my extended hiatus from posting. My excuse is that I‘ve been hard at work helping to launch the California Elder Justice Workgroup (CEJW), a mammoth and exciting undertaking. It started with a few of us who are involved in projects funded by the Archstone Foundation as part of its Elder Abuse and Neglect Initiative (EANI).

AARP Looks at Criminal Background Checks for Home Care Workers

2009-10-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

Publicly funded programs like In-Home Support Services (IHSS) that provide helpers to assist with such basic daily tasks as eating, bathing, housekeeping, and shopping, are a godsend to people with disabilities who want to live independently. Some of these programs reimburse families for providing care to their own members, buffering them against impoverishment. But the lack of screening and

In Memory of Gita Shah

2009-09-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

Last week, my good friend Gita Shah of Mumbai passed away. Although I’d known she’d been sick for some time, it still came as a shock. She was one of those forces of nature that seem indestructible. My sadness though has been tempered by a flood of joyful memories. I met Gita in Mumbai in 1992 during a Council for International Fellowship (CIF) exchange program for social workers from around the

Financial Elder Abuse: Hot Off the Presses

2009-07-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve worked with Pam Teaster, Professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and president of the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (NCPEA), on a couple of research projects over the years and have always been impressed by her readiness to design studies that answer questions practitioners most want the answers to. It’s not easy to translate practice wisdom

From Daejeon to Cleveland: A World Elder Abuse Awareness Day Odyssey

2009-06-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

This was the first year I participated in World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD) events, and I did it to the hilt. WEAAD, the brainchild of Elizabeth Podnieks and the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA), has been gaining momentum since its 2006 debut, capturing the imaginations of program planners around the world. INPEA’s Web site provides a glimpse of the far-flung

Secrets in America: New Documentary Focuses on Elder Financial Abuse

2009-04-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

By the time David Jones emailed me to say that “our” film was finished, I’d forgotten all about it. It was well over a year since I’d met Stanislaus County’s Communications Director and it had taken that long to secure the funds and produce the half-hour long Secrets in America. With $12,000 in grants from the Stanislaus Community Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, David used friends and

New Cal Law Allows for Video-Conferencing in Elder Abuse Cases

2009-02-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

Among California’s new laws that went into effect on Jan 1 was AB 1158, which allows for the use of two-way video conferencing to examine witnesses who can't come to court. The new law may be a first step in tackling some of the obstacles posed by the 2004 US Supreme Court’s Crawford v. Washington decision, which was a major setback in the prosecution of elder abuse cases (even though the case

Mental Health Services for Vulnerable Elders

2009-01-15T14:17:00.000-08:00

Many of us in California were disheartened to learn that as part of Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan to balance the budget, he wants to raid Proposition 63 funds. Prop 63 was a 2004 ballot initiative that imposed a 1% tax on millionaires to fund mental health services. The governor wants to use the funds to pay for existing programs instead of developing new services, something the initiative

Mediating Elder Financial Abuse

2008-12-29T06:28:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, my long-time friend, Oakland-based attorney Frederick Hertz made the switch from litigating conflicts over money and property involving family members and partners to mediating them. When he told me that he’d teamed up with another mediator with 20 year’s experience as a family therapist to explore the legal and psychological interface of “family business” gone wrong, I was

Community Colleges, An Untapped Resource for Preventing Elder Abuse

2008-12-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

For the last three years, I’ve been working with faculty at City College of San Francisco (CCSF), under a grant from the Archstone Foundation, to develop a course in elder abuse prevention for students in the paramedic, health care interpreter, and community health worker programs. Along with my colleagues consultant Eileen Goldman and CCSF instructor Robin Roth, we started out teaching Health 9A

Powers of Attorney, Elder Justice, Help Hiring Helpers, and No More Minnesota Nice

2008-12-05T12:27:00.000-08:00

New Report on Powers of Attorney (POAs)On Thursday, AARP’s Public Policy Institute released Power of Attorney Abuse: What States Can Do About It. Written by Lori Stiegel and Ellen Klem of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging, the 89-page document compares state laws on POAs and highlights measures that offer special protections against abuse, which include: Clear statements

Getting Our Minds (and Laws) Around Undue Influence

2008-10-31T11:09:00.000-07:00

Undue influence. We know it when we see it, and those of us in elder abuse prevention see it often: elders who are ill, lonesome, isolated, impaired, or grieving being persuaded to give away assets, sometimes homes and life savings, to new acquaintances, suitors, family members, or even cunning cons in other countries. They use various devices--trust documents, powers of attorney, wills,

Remembering Del Martin

2008-09-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

“When you add our society’s propensity toward violence with ageism and sexism, you have a dangerous situation.”Del Martin, 1995 The flags at San Francisco’s City Hall flew at half-mast on August 28 in memory of Del Martin, a pioneering figure in the fight for the rights of women, lesbians, survivors of domestic violence, and the elderly. Her seminal book Battered Wives, published in 1976 and

Summer Reads in Elder Abuse

2008-08-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

I’m not a fan of pulp mystery writer Sue Grafton, but when I heard that her latest book, “T” is for Trespass, was about elder identity theft, I was curious and grabbed a copy I found in a discount sales bin. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Grafton’s alphabet mystery series, beginning with “A” is for Alibi, which features plucky private eye Kinsey Millhone. As a

Wall Street Journal Looks at Home Care Aide Crisis

2008-07-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

Readers know that the shortage of in-home workers and elders’ vulnerability to abuse by criminal caregivers has long been a concern of mine. So I was delighted with Phil Shiskin’s in-depth article on the subject that appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal. It focuses on California and mentions Napa's effort to develop a local screening program. Check it out at Caregiver Abuse. For more on the

More on Identify Theft

2008-07-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let readers know that I’ve posted a new page on my Web site on ID theft against the elderly. It's in the Learn About Elder Abuse section. Highlights include:Researchers disagree about who the culprits are: techies who hack or acquaintances who steal IDs the old fashioned way. Are corporate interests at play here?The American Bar Association is urging legal aid attorneys to help ID

Luring Health Care Providers into Geriatrics

2008-05-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

Supporters of loan forgiveness programs aimed at encouraging health care providers to specialize in geriatrics got a boost from a report issued last month by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce is based on the findings of an ad hoc committee that looked at the health care needs of the 78 million baby boomers who’ll soon be turning

Guardianship Under Assault

2008-05-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

Indictments of guardianship and guardians are flying fast and furiously these days on Web sites and blogs:A new site, operated by a group calling itself the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse, explains guardianship this way:"At present, it operates to ensnare the most vulnerable people in a larger and larger trawling net, now including those merely physically "incapacitated"! It has

Undue Influence: There Oughta be a Law (or Two)

2008-03-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

When undue influence was “discovered” as a significant factor in elder abuse a decade ago, it immediately struck a chord with advocates and service providers who'd been seeing the phenomenon for years. They may not have had a term for it, but they knew it when they saw it.But translating undue influence into law, or more specifically, translating it into an infraction of the law, hasn’t been

Expanding our Notion of Accountability

2008-03-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, I was in the middle of writing a proposal to explore restorative justice approaches to elder abuse when I happened to see the new Pew Center report on incarceration (see Pew Report) that showed that more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars. That’s 1.6 million, the highest rate of any nation in the world. And it gets worse: one in 36 Hispanic and one in 15 adult

Abuse and Home Care Workers: Giving Policymakers the Lowdown

2008-02-01T14:03:00.000-08:00

APS workers, prosecutors, and aging service providers know the frustration well: They discover that a personal care attendant who is being paid with public funds is abusing an elder. When they prevail upon public entities to fire the worker, they’re told “no can do.” When abusive caregivers are hired and supervised by elders, only the elders can fire them. We also know that seniors sometimes

Chat with M.T. Connolly

2008-01-26T16:27:00.000-08:00

As an update to my last post, M.T. has an article running in the Outlook section of today's Washington Post. See A Hidden Crime.On Monday, she’ll be taking questions about the article, abuse, and what can be done about it on the Post’s Web site at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.You can submit questions and comments before or during the session.

The Year in Elder Abuse Prevention

2008-01-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

The journalistic tradition of year-end “news roundups” provides an excellent ruse for cleaning out my file of items I didn’t get to last year. Here are a few:Under the rubric of “Congratulations and Transitions”:Marie Theresa Connolly left her post at the Department of Justice to accept a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she’ll be writing a book on elder

Guardianship, Reverse Mortgage Fraud, and Politicians Posing as Health Care Workers

2007-12-18T13:44:00.000-08:00

Advocacy UpdateThere’s lots happening on the advocacy front, and I’m a bit behind. But here goes: Guardianship Reform: The National SceneLast week, Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-OR) released Guardianship for the Elderly: Protecting the Rights and Welfare of Seniors with Reduced Capacity, a report on the role of the feds in overseeing the guardianship system. The report was based on responses to a

Geriatricians, Angry and Otherwise

2007-11-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

Last week, I had a fascinating conversation with French journalist Dominique Prédali, co-author of On Tue Les Vieux, or Killing Elders, which describes elder abuse in French nursing homes and hospitals. Written for the general public, the book's small initial printing sold out the first day it hit bookstores last year and is now in its third printing. She is currently researching a new book on

Fighting Back Against Financial Crime

2007-10-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it seems like we're fighting a losing battle against increasingly sophisticated fraud perps. But there have been some inroads, and I thought it was time for some good news.My hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, recently reported on a lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson against the giant international life insurance company Allianz for pressuring seniors into

NYT's Article on Nursing Home Buyouts Prompts Action

2007-10-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

In a follow-up to its September 23rd article "At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing" by Charles Duhigg, the New York Times yesterday reported that the article has prompted a flurry of Congressional activity. Last week, Senators Max Baucus, who chairs the Finance Committee, and ranking member Charles Grassley sent letters to five private investment firms requesting information about their

Elder Abuse for Profit

2007-10-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

In a chilling article that ran on September 23, The New York Times analyzed trends in patient care in nursing homes purchased by private investment groups. Using Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data, The Times looked at more than 1,200 nursing homes purchased by large private investment groups since 2000 and more than 14,000 other homes; they compared the investor-owned homes

Keeping up With Financial Predators

2007-10-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

While interviewing Shawna Reeves Nourzaie for another recent posting, I asked her what affect the sub-prime crash has had on her job. Shawna is a social worker at the Fair Lending Project for Seniors of the Council on Aging Silicon Valley. She organizes community education and outreach events about predatory lending and hooks victims up to social and legal services. Up until now, her passion has

County Caregiver Screening Program Faces Challenges

2007-10-04T10:05:00.000-07:00

An article in yesterday's Napa Valley Register provides an update on a project I've been watching for many months. Lacking confidence that the state was going to solve the problem of preventing dangerous criminals from becoming caregivers and working in frail elders' homes, advocates in Napa County California, including Betty Rhodes of the county's Commission on Aging and Terri Restelli-Deits,

Senior Centers as Financial Abusers

2007-09-25T16:39:00.001-07:00

Can a senior center incur civil liability for elder financial abuse if it permits its facility to be used by a presenter who then financially abuses attendees? The answer may be yes, at least in California, according to San Francisco attorney Steven Riess, who contends that: “By permitting an

Comings, Goings, and Congratulations

2007-09-05T06:29:00.001-07:00

Congratulations and heartfelt best wishes to Mary Twomey, who will be leaving her job as Director of the San Francisco Consortium for Elder Abuse Prevention at the Institute on Aging to become co-director, along with Laura Mosqueda, and northern California liaison of U.C. Irvine's Center of Excellence in Elder Abuse and Neglect.Obviously I've had a strong interest in Mary's work since she took

Let's Try This Again

2007-07-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry that my instructions to readers about how to participate in discussions with Rene Bergeron's students were misleading (she assigned students in her "Interpersonal Abuse and Violence Across the Life Span" class to start or participate in discussions about previous posts).Here’s how to participate:To read the original posts being discussed, click on the links below. At the bottom of each post

With a little help from my friends (and colleagues)

2007-07-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

Rene Bergeron, Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of New Hampshire, has assigned students in her Interpersonal Abuse & Violence Across the Life Span class to participate on my blog this week as a class assignment. Many of you, I'm sure, are familiar with Rene's work. She's done fascinating research on a variety of topics, including ethical issues in elder abuse and self-neglect.

Predators and Politics

2007-07-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, the New York Times ran a chilling account, "Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist," about how financial predators operate and how presumably legitimate businesses help them. Here's how it opens: The thieves operated from small offices in Toronto and hangar-size rooms in India. Every night, working from lists of names and phone numbers, they called World War II

Posters a Hit!

2007-06-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

Word got around about the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day posters designed by a class at City College of San Francisco. I've had 1,000 guests visit my blog this month to check them out, and the City College folks had requests for the artwork from all over the world. The posters have been shown by agencies in the US, Australia, and Canada, and they even made an appearance at the World Health

Art for Elder Abuse Awareness

2007-06-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

In my March 26 post, I mentioned that an advanced graphics design class at City College of San Francisco that I’ve been working with got interested in World Elder Abuse Awareness Day and decided to design posters for a class assignment. Here are the wonderful results.Several of the posters have been translated into multiple languages. The class designed collateral materials too.For those of you

Caring About Caregivers

2007-05-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

Last month, while we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday at her board and care home, I spent a long time talking to Carole, the daughter-in-law of another resident, Brenda. Before moving into the home a year ago, Brenda had lived with her son and Carole, and the couple’s two pre-teen kids. The arrangement lasted five years, during which, Brenda’s mental capacity declined and Carole’s

In Memory of Phil Lucas and More

2007-04-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

I recently learned that Phil Lucas, director of the wonderful film Restoring the Sacred Circle, died in February. The news came from Dave Baldridge, president of the National Indian Project Center, a cohort of mine, along with advocate Bill Benson, on a project on elder abuse in Indian Country for the National Center on Elder Abuse. Other Phil fans include Aileen Kaye, who worked closely with him

Emerging Artists Against Elder Abuse

2007-03-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

One of the most enjoyable projects I've worked on lately is consulting with the Health Sciences Department of City College of San Francisco to develop a training for emergency medical personnel– fire fighters, EMTs, and paramedics. As part of the project, which is funded by the Archstone Foundation, we're developing an on-line, interactive class with the help of City College design instructor

Defining Elder Abuse: The Debate Continues

2007-03-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, while Nobel laureate and holocaust scholar Eli Wiesel was in San Francisco to speak at a peace rally, a young man approached him at his hotel and asked for an interview. Wiesel agreed to talk in the lobby, but for some reason, they ended up getting into an elevator together. When they got to the younger man’s floor, he pushed Wiesel out and tried to drag him

From the Folks Who Brought You “Friendly Fire”

2007-02-26T08:31:00.000-08:00

What do the U.S. military and the long-term care network have in common? It seems we’re competing for the same criminals (reformed, hopefully) to fill critical manpower shortages. In our case, the shortage is for nursing home employees and in-home attendants. In theirs, it’s for soldiers to fight an unpopular war. We’re both struggling with the uncertainties of deciding when past criminal conduct

Feel-Good Laws or Real Reform?

2007-02-12T15:18:00.000-08:00

California’s conservatorship reform package, hailed as landmark legislation, was inspired by the LA Times searing report “Guardians for Profit.” The series portrayed private professional conservators, who are subject to less regulation than hairdressers, plundering clients’ estates while judges overlooked incompetence, neglect, and theft. To question conservatorship reform these days is near

NIJ Funds Study on Financial Abuse

2007-01-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

The National Institute of Justice recently awarded a 2-year, $300,000 grant to University of Virginia law professor Thomas Hafemeister and psychiatry professor Shelly Jackson to study financial elder abuse in Virginia. Hafemeister, whose “Financial Abuse of the Elderly in Domestic Settings” appeared as an appendix in the National Research Council’s Elder Mistreatment: Abuse Neglect, and

The “De-feminization” of Domestic Violence and What it Means for Elder Abuse

2007-01-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

In 1994, the San Francisco Consortium got a grant from the Administration on Aging to develop services for older battered women. I was delighted. A few years earlier, I’d collaborated with the Family Violence Prevention Fund on a series of talks on elder domestic violence for aging and DV service providers. Since nobody knew much about the subject then, my co-trainer from FVPF talked about DV for

Last call on undue influence

2006-12-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

Before putting undue influence to rest (at least for now), I've added a resource page on the topic to my website. Just copy and paste:http://lisanerenberg.com/learn/undueInfluence.htmlWhile you're visiting the site, you might want to check out my "Lisa's picks" section. Just reviewed a booklet, Missing Voices: Views of Older Persons on Elder Abuse by the World Health Organization and the

PPS on Undue Influence: The Civil Side

2006-12-14T14:08:00.000-08:00

For the season of giving...Caregivers in California who receive last-minute bequests from those they care for are presumed to have exercised undue influence, even if they were close friends. That’s because of a controversial 1993 law that was recently upheld on appeal (Bernard v. Foley).Probate Code Section 21350 was enacted following a scandal that involved an estate-planning attorney who named

Postscript on Undue Influence is Not a Crime

2006-12-04T17:37:00.000-08:00

Last week, Melissa McKowan, prosecutor in the undue influence case I described in my last post, told me that the California Supreme Court has denied a request to review the appellate court’s reversal, so the case can’t be retried. She had this to say about the case:“I was devastated by the decision. The defendant made himself indispensable to Mr. Roussey, who became so attached to the defendent,

Undue Influence is Not a Crime

2006-11-20T06:05:00.000-08:00

So said a California appeals court last month in ruling on the case of a 78-year-old San Mateo man who wrote over $660,000 in checks to a friend and helper. Norman Roussey, who had an "anxiety disorder," lived with his mother until her death a decade ago. Roussey met Ronald Brock, a law school graduate who worked for his lawyer, while he was settling his mother's estate. Brock became his

Meditations on Mediation

2006-11-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

My old friend Fred Hertz is arguably the nation’s leading expert on “gay divorce.” A lawyer, he represents partners in break-ups and has written a book on the subject, been interviewed on NPR, appeared on Oprah, and is frequently quoted in the press. So, I was more than a little surprised when he told me recently that he doesn’t want to litigate cases anymore but instead, use his skills to help

Archstone Foundation Creates Community of Contractors

2006-10-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

Last month I was at the second “convening” of Archstone Foundation grantees, representatives from projects funded under the foundation’s 5-year, $8 million Elder Abuse and Neglect Initiative. I’m not actually a grantee but consult on two training projects. Along with my colleague Eileen Goldman, I’m helping faculty at San Francisco's City College develop a curriculum for fire fighters, paramedics

Perpetrators with Dementias

2006-10-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago, a friend who runs a dementia care program asked me to talk to her staff following a tragedy involving a client, a man with Alzheimer’s disease, who'd killed his wife. The staff was understandably upset. But what made matters worse was that some felt they’d seen it coming. They’d filed a report with APS, and a worker investigated. But since the violence was dementia-related and

Synchronicity, Plumbers and Elder Abuse

2006-09-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was composing a laundry list of the various disciplines and professionals that have a role to play in stopping elder abuse for a book I’m writing. It included all varieties of health and mental health care providers, bankers, judges, clergy, entomologists (don’t ask), auditors, mail carriers, social scientists and many, many more. In the other room, my husband was dealing with a

Elder ID Theft: Should We be Concerned?

2006-09-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

Traditionally, those of us in the field of elder abuse prevention haven’t dealt with “consumer” crimes like telemarketing scams or identity theft. There was no evidence to suggest that elders were targeted, and some studies even suggested that elders were less likely than younger people to be victimized. Besides, our focus was on abuse by family members and acquaintances. It’s true that only

Follow-up on Government-Subsidized Elder Abuse

2006-08-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

Although I welcome feedback, apparently my blog doesn’t. Seems it’s been rejecting comments. I’m exploring how to fix the problem, but in the meantime, I wanted to pass along an item from Lori Delagrammatikas, program coordinator of Project Master at San Diego State University’s School of Social Work:Riverside County (California) convinced an IHSS administrative hearing judge to deny a client the

Consumer Choice or Government-Subsidized Elder Abuse?

2006-08-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

Years ago, San Francisco’s multidisciplinary team was discussing a case involving flagrant abuse by a chore worker. When the group learned that the worker was being paid with public funds through the state’s In-Home Support Services program, we turned to Mary Counihan, supervisor of our APS and IHSS units, and chimed in unison “Fire him!”It wasn’t that simple, Mary explained. Under IHSS, clients

Saying Goodbye to an Elder Champion

2006-07-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

When Bruce Coleman retires from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the end of the month, it will be a tremendous loss for American elders and their advocates. As coordinator of “Project Emptor,” a position he’s held since 2004, Bruce has helped countless victims and “would be” victims of telemarketing fraud. Project Emptor, as in caveat emptor, Latin for "buyer beware," intercepts packages and

Offenders, Victims and Restorative Justice

2006-07-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

Last month, I presented at the Offender Treatment, Victim Services, Restorative Justice conference in Miami, which was sponsored by the Institute of Evidence-Based and Best Practices. The conference was a bold one–it’s not that usual to bring victims’ and offenders’ advocates together, and when you throw in sessions on applying restorative justice (RJ) to domestic violence (DV), you know they

Remembering Rosalie Wolf

2006-06-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to believe that today marks the fifth anniversary of Rosalie Wolf’s death. For many of us, her presence is still very much felt. Almost daily, we see citations to her work, references to JEAN, and news about the organizations she spearheaded and the awards she inspired. But beyond these tangible reminders is something less concrete. In many ways, Rosalie set the tone for our field. It

Long Distance Undue Influence

2006-06-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

Last week, San Diego prosecutor Paul Greenwood posted a message to NCEA’s list serve about an “articulate, coherent and charming” elderly woman who’d sent over $50,000 to telemarketers in Canada despite being warned repeatedly that they were crooks. She described feeling “hypnotized.” It reminded me of when Dennis Morris, a San Francisco prosecutor, came to a meeting of our multidisciplinary team

Criminal Caregivers

2006-06-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

Criminals shouldn’t be providing care to frail old people. That assumption is what’s driving more and more agencies, states and the federal government to explore criminal background checks for prospective long term care employees.But ensuring that vulnerable elders have trustworthy caregivers isn’t that easy. When Pennsylvania amended its protective service law prohibiting long-term facilities

Ageism, Elder Abuse and Social Justice

2006-05-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

It’s not surprising that Paul Kleyman would take offense at a “Close to Home” cartoon that ran in a recent edition of the Washington Post. In it, an elderly bald man is reading a tabloid called Aging Today, which has a wrinkled, swimsuit-clad elderly woman on its cover under the banner "1st annual swimsuit edition.” The cartoon’s caption is “A dark day in publishing.”Paul is editor of the real

Walmart Benefits from Restitution Reform

2006-05-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was updating a handout I use for presentations on financial abuse and decided to check up on a project I list in the "Best Practices” section. It's a program created to revamp Vermont’s restitution recovery system, which got started after a 2001 state auditor's report revealed that only 13 cents of every dollar owed for restitution had been collected during the previous year.The