Elder Sexual Abuse: The Unfortunate Reality

By: Ariana Rodriguez

National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, Blood Cancer Awareness Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and World Alzheimer's Disease Month are all in September while this blog post will not discuss each of these causes, we do believe it is important to take a moment to acknowledge and recognize them. With that being said there might be some topics, content or themes that has the potential to be triggering.

Elderly abuse is defined by RAINN as, "When an older person experiences distress or harm because of a trusted individual’s actions (or failure to act)". While the focus of this blog post is elder sexual abuse unfortunately other forms of elder abuse do take place such as but not limited to Abandonment emotional abuse, financial exploitation, neglect, physical abuse, and Sexual abuse. September being Alzheimer Disease Awareness Month directly influenced the topic of the post. A subcategory of elderly people are elderly people who have or have had Alzheimer's Disease and they like other elderly people with a chronic illness meet at the intersection of increased vulnerability to elder sexual abuse.

Due to ageism, a declining mental and/ or physical health, loss of economic power (Cota Victoria & Seniors Victoria) and other various reasonings elderly people growing in age become increasingly more vulnerable to elder sexual abuse. Because of the growing dependence on others be that family or a living center that comes with getting older. While we would love for a world where people do not get exploited, abused or mistreated based on their vulnerabilities the sad reality is, that is just not the world we live in. Elderly individuals face specific barriers in reporting some of those being a reliance on their abuser, their physical and/or cognitive abilities, shame, or a fear of retaliation, and that just names a few.

There is no one definite 100% full proof warning signs to elderly sexual abuse but there are some potential signs of it. I want to take a moment to emphasize the word potential because I do not want this blog post to be misleading. Voices 4 hotline categorizes potential warning signs into behavioral and physical. Just to name a few from the physical category; unexplained STI's, bruising of genitals, bleeding and/or irritation of anus or genitals. Potential behavioral warning signs were agitation, anxiety, inability to focus or abrupt change in mood, new fear of specific places or people and Anxiety or fears about bathing or using the restroom.

Rather than leaving you as reader to sit in the harsh reality of what 1 out of every 10 elderly person may have experienced in 2023. We hope that you are also met with feelings of hope while you may not be able to prevent it from occurring you might be able to provide the victim/ survivor with beneficial resources that can help them. One way to potentially help is reporting the abuse to Adult Protective Services (APS), they are able to provide information regarding next steps across in all 50 states (Help In Your Area - NAPSA). Another resource is the Eldercare Locator, while they do not exclusively locate resources for elder sexual abuse, resources for victims of sexual elder abuse are available. If you are looking for resources closer to Newport News, VA we offer a 24/7 crisis hotline, free and confidential individual crisis counseling, support groups and hospital and court accompaniment to people in Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson, Surry, Suffolk and the counties of Isle of Wight and York. This topic and that experience can be very heavy please remember you do not have to figure your next steps or healing journey alone.