On Friday, the Mills Administration issued a new report that creates a roadmap to combat elder abuse.
Elder abuse can range from physical to sexual to financial. And in 2020 alone, an estimated 40,000 Mainers over age 60 experienced some form of abuse, according to the Elder Justice Roadmap report. The report also estimates that older Mainers collectively lose about $4 million a year due to financial exploitation.
Jaye Martin, executive director of Legal Services for the Elderly, says elder abuse has increased during the pandemic.
"People are at home and sheltering in place and they're right in the house with the person who is either exploiting or abusing them, because unfortunately the most typical situation is a family member is the person that's perpetrating the elder abuse," she says.
Martin is co-chair of a 21-member partnership of public and private agencies and organizations that created the roadmap. It identifies four priority areas to better detect, respond, and prevent elder abuse. The top priority is bolstering victim services, which includes adding staff to Adult Protective Services and establishing elder abuse prosecutors and investigators. Other priorities are increasing public and professional education, implementing public policy, and better data collection and evaluation. Fellow partnership co-chair Judy Shaw, Securities Administrator for the state of Maine, says efforts are already underway to implement some of the Roadmap's recommendations.
"Things are happening," she says. "One of the secondary recommendations was to create a securities victims restitution fund. That bill is pending before the legislature as we speak."
While some of the recommendations require funding, Martin says many can be accomplished by allocating existing resources.
