VICE News Op-ed: Bipartisan Grassley Legislation “Great Bill Trump Signed His First Year”

Following years-long work and leadership from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), bipartisan legislation to step up enforcement against perpetrators of crimes targeting senior citizens, the Elder Abuse Prevention and Protection Act, passed Congress and became law late last year.

 

“Families across America, including in Iowa, have been victimized by crimes targeting seniors, and as the population ages, we can expect more and more victims if we don’t act. The Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act takes meaningful steps to equip law enforcement, seniors and caregivers with additional tools so they can deter these crimes and hold perpetrators accountable,” Grassley said following the bill being signed into law by President Trump. “I am glad that the Senate, the House and the president—Democrat and Republican alike—took action to address such a kitchen-table, personal dignity issue.”

 

Excerpts from a VICE News article covering the EAPPA and its importance for older Americans can be found below. More information about the bill can be found here.

 

Mark Hay

1/17/18

 

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The EAPPA was proof that Congress can still get things done, at least some of the time. And though it didn’t get much in the way of media attention, it’s a bona fide achievement. According to Bob Blancato, a prominent anti-elder abuse and neglect activist, this “was the most significant elder justice legislation since the passage of the Elder Justice Act in 2010,” the first law to authorize federal funding to address elder abuse.

 

The EAPPA was a priority for the Obama administration in its final days, noted Ronald Acierno, a professor of nursing who studies elder abuse and justice, and its co-sponsors in the Senate (Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Republican Chuck Grassley) did their best to get the word out about it. So the fact that its passage attracted almost no media attention may seem odd. But as Julie Schoen of the National Center on Elder Abuse put it, “With all that’s been going on in the media and the administration, maybe people just haven’t seen this as a priority.”

 

Priority or not, the bill was a direct reaction to growing awareness of a major issue. Every year, by some estimates, scammers, caretakers, or even their own children bilk about 1.5 million older Americans out of their cash, to the tune of $2.9 billion—and that’s probably a low estimate. A portion of the bill was named after one such victim, Robert Matava, a decorated WWII veteran from Blumenthal’s state of Connecticut whose son defrauded him and left him penniless; he died in 2011 at age 90, and his son was apparently never brought to justice. Other elderly Americans are subject to physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, endangerment, or neglect.

 

“I’ve been involved in prosecuting these crimes for over 22 years, and all I’ve seen is a steady increase,” said Paul Greenwood, an elder abuse specialist at the San Diego district attorney’s office and leading elder justice prosecutor. “There are a lot of reasons: the demographics, that we’ve done a better job of identifying this as a crime, and, thankfully, that we do have more trained law enforcement” tracking down and reporting these crimes, at least in some places.

 

The EAPPA addresses this issue through a range of provisions. Most notably, it installs elder justice coordinators in the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, and every federal judicial district, and orders the creation of tools and allocation of more resources for training to assist officials at all levels in tackling elder abuse. It also calls for more and better data collection on elder abuse, opens up access to old funding pools to help the victims of these crimes, and increases the penalties for certain types of financial fraud against the elderly. Finally, it orders reviews of existing elder justice programs at the federal level and the development of further policy recommendations, among other minor provisions.

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