Defining elder abuse varies in that it can consist of acts of commission and acts of ommision.by caretakers responsible for the older person’s well being. Therefore, abuse encompasses gross neglect as well as acts of intentional harm. These include assaults unreasonable confinement, financial exploitation or failure to provide clothing, food and shelter. (Crime Victims, An intro to Victimology, pg 79, 219-220)

Persons who provide care to elderly people who live a t home perpetrate domestic elder abuse. Individuals who have contractual obligation to tend to the needs of older persons commit institutional elder abuse. The offender is most commonly a close relative, especially a grown child, spouse or sibling. The typical target is a frail elderly woman over 70. In most cases the victim and the

abuser live in the same household in social isolation from friends, neighbors, and kin who might otherwise deem what they are doing wrong.

A bill designed to make it easier to prosecute cases of elder abuse got initial approval Monday night from the Missouri House. One part of the bill would allow statements elderly victims make at the time of an assault to be admissible as evidence later in court. Opponents said this provision would keep those accused from being able to face their accusers. The bill would also ensure that law enforcement officers are "promptly" called in to investigate reports of abuse. Under current law, the Division of Aging investigates reports and, under certain circumstances, refers them to police. Proponents have said this referral sometimes takes weeks or months, enough time for the victims to have forgotten or died.

A Toronto retirement home manager was found guilty yesterday of assaulting two elderly residents who testified against him on police videotaped statements from beyond the grave. Ramnarine (Tony) Khelawon, 35, was convicted of aggravated assault and uttering a death threat against Teofil Skupien. "Mr. Khelawon beat Mr. Skupien, who was 78 years old, until he had multiple bruising, bleeding from his face and broken ribs," prosecutor David Butt said after the verdict. Khelawon was also found guilty of assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon -- a cane -- against Atillio Dinino, 68. Skupien was beaten for returning dishes to the kitchen; Dinino because water was found on a bathroom floor. Both victims have since died from unrelated causes. Their accounts of the assaults were given in court via the videotapes that Butt described as the "heart" of his case. He said the men were frail and vulnerable victims who lived in the home because they needed Khelawon, a nurse, to care for them -- the "very person who beat them until they bled." (Copyright 2001 Sun Media Corporation The Toronto Sun November 22, 2001 Thursday, Final Edition )

he had withheld food and liquids from his father for three days preceding his death because company was expected and the son did not want the house to smell. Molko won convictions against two sons who lived with their father but also wanted to charge an adult daughter who had been in the home on the holiday and on several occasions before his death. The victim's wife had died three years earlier. The court majority, interpreting what it called an overly vague state law against elder abuse, ruled that the daughter could not be prosecuted because she had no control over her older brothers, the primary caretakers. The state law, passed in 1983, makes it a felony for "any person" to permit, knowingly and willfully,

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