Cops: Englewood woman beat up 82-year-old mother-in-law, knocked out teeth

An Englewood woman accused of beating her 82-year-old mother-in-law so violently that she knocked out several teeth and gave her a concussion was transferred from the Bronx yesterday to the Bergen County Jail.

Mary Tene, 54, was being held on $125,000 bail, charged with aggravated assault and elderly abuse, after being extradited.

 

Police said the 5-foot-5-inch, 105-pound Tene beat the older woman the night of Sept. 11 after she tried to convince her to kick a drug habit. Tene then high-tailed it across the Hudson, they said.

 

Even though she cut and dyed her hair, Englewood police tracked Tene to an Adams Place tenement in the Bronx, Englewood Detective Capt. Timothy Torell told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

 

On Sept. 30, she “walked right into the arms” of Detectives Chris Kedersha and Carlos Marte on Sept. 30 as she headed to there, he said.

 

“She tried to pass herself off as a cousin of hers,” Torell said, but the detectives weren’t fooled (SEE: Fugitive accused of beating mother-in-law nabbed by Englewood detectives in the Bronx).

 

Investigators had been looking for Tene since the night of Sept. 11, when responding officers found the severely beaten victim at an East Palisade Avenue apartment between Dean and Engle streets.

 

Detectives learned that her mother-in-law “had been trying to counsel Tene about her drug problem” when the attack occurred, Torell said.

 

The victim “was in rough shape when our officers got there,” he said.

 

Tene has a violent criminal history spanning New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Florida, records show.

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Cops: Englewood woman beat up 82-year-old mother-in-law, knocked out teeth

Recommended Website: A Breach of Trust: WWII Veteran and Wife

Humana Inc., one of the nation’s largest managed-care companies, was accused in a Federal lawsuit yesterday of misleading health plan members by failing to disclose financial incentives to doctors and case reviewers intended to keep down costs by limiting or denying care.

The suit, filed on behalf of workers in Florida and Texas, asked a United States District Court in Miami to certify a class action on behalf of more than six million customers of Humana health plans nationwide. The suit seeks triple damages under the Federal anti-racketeering law. No amounts were specified.

The plaintiffs say they did not get the health coverage that they thought they were selecting because the company did not disclose incentives to doctors to deny care.

Joseph Sellers, a Washington lawyer who represents the plaintiffs in Miami, said the suit did not question whether managed care was a good idea or whether cost should be a factor. Instead, the suit contends that there was a ”breach of trust” because plan members thought that medical guidelines would solely determine their treatment.

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Humana Sued in Federal Court Over Incentives for Doctors

State bills target elder abuse, theft

SAN DIEGO — San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and two local state senators Monday urged Gov. Jerry Brown to sign three bills aimed at helping to prevent elder abuse, including financial elder abuse.

“The changes to the law included in these bills will make a real difference as our Elder Abuse Unit works to hold defendants accountable when they abuse senior citizens in our community,” Dumanis said.

She was joined by Sens. Mark Wyland, R-Carlsbad, and Joel Anderson, R- San Diego, in encouraging the governor to sign the legislation.

SB 543, which is sponsored by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, would ensure that theft from an elder is a “qualifying prior offense” when sentencing a person to prison, removing an ambiguity in the law to treat elder theft with the same seriousness as any other form of theft.

“My mother was a victim of financial fraud, so this issue is personal to me,” Wyland said. “One of the most meaningful things we can do as legislators is to strengthen laws to protect the vulnerable in our communities from people who would take advantage of them.”

According to Anderson, “SB 543 will ensure criminals who commit crimes against our grandmas and grandpas will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

“I believe, by signing this bill into law, Governor Brown will be sending a clear message to seniors,” he said. “California will not tolerate senior abuse and we are committed to protecting these cherished members of our society with all our might.”

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State bills target elder abuse, theft

Linda Kincaid Reports — Elder abuse: NCPEA Forum on Polyvictimization in Later Life

National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (NCPEA) will host its First National Forum on Polyvictimization in Later Life on October 1, 2013 in St. Paul, Minnesota. The ongoing project aims to enhance professional knowledge and understanding of polyvictimization as a characteristic of elder abuse. Discussions will include the most promising solutions to this poorly understood problem.
NCPEA describes the following forms of elder abuse.

• Physical abuse is physical force that results in bodily injury, pain, or impairment. It includes assault, battery, and inappropriate restraint.
• Sexual abuse is non-consensual sexual contact of any kind with an older person.
• Domestic violence is an escalating pattern of violence by an intimate partner where the violence is used to exercise power and control.
• Psychological abuse is the willful infliction of mental or emotional anguish by threat, humiliation, or other verbal or nonverbal conduct.
• Financial abuse is the illegal or improper use of an older person’s funds, property, or resources.
• Neglect is the failure of a caregiver to fulfill his or her care giving responsibilities. Self-neglect is failure to provide for one’s own essential needs.

Multiple forms of elder abuse often occur together. A single perpetrator often engages in multiple forms of abuse. Multiple perpetrators abuse the same victim.

Polyvictimization is a complex phenomenon and a new term for the elder abuse field.

The Forum will include brief presentations and active workgroups exploring different dimensions of the issue. Discussions will be videotaped, with segments to be used in a virtual training series being produced as part of the project.

The Forum aims to arrive at a new framework that places elder abuse within the context of polyvictimization. It will also contribute a later life perspective to the ways that polyvictimization is typically considered.

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Elder abuse: NCPEA Forum on Polyvictimization in Later Life

This Man’s Shocking Story of Elder Financial Abuse Will Make You Hug Your Grandparents

“I should preface this by saying that my brother has always been a sociopath,” Brian Litwak told me. “But I had no other choice than to trust him because the doctor had told him, but not me, that I was supposed to die in six months.”

 

A former teacher, he tells his tale in a nonchalant, matter-of-fact voice. At 78 he’s wrinkled and pale, but his eyes still twinkle and his memory seems precise. I hear flickers of anger as he sits, cane in hand, in an armchair across from me.

 

He has reason to be upset. 

 

Brian is a victim of the financial side of elder abuse. His younger brother, he tells me, stole thousands of dollars from him when Brian moved into an assisted living home in Tucson in 2003..

 

He came to Tucson from California with about $250,000 and ended up with $12,000. The money, which Brian earned over 33 years as a teacher, started to disappear after his brother was granted a [pwer of attorney to take care of his health issues and finances.

Although his brother thought he didn’t have much time left, Brian soldiered on. In 2008, he visited his technologically savvy son in San Francisco, who finally uncovered that Brian’s brother had lied to him about how much his California condominium had sold for (he thought it went for $139,000, he says it actually sold for $295,000).

“Feeling there was something wrong” when he returned to Tucson, Brian unsuccessfully tried to broach the subject with his brother. Things took a turn for the worse when he got a letter from Medicare that said that because he hadn’t paid his fees for five months and was suspended from the program. His brother, he said, had been neglecting these payments.

“That’s very scary for an old person, not to have medical coverage,”he said.

Brian is not alone. More than 500,000 adults will be abused or neglected annually, and that number is probably an underestimate because many people are likely too scared or otherwise unable to seek help.

This is especially concerning when you take into account that the elder population is rapidly increasing. By 2050, 20 percent of the population will be made up of people who are 65 and older, and the fastest growing portion of the population is people 85 and up.

Thankfully, Handmaker — the assisted living home where Brian lives — has a policy where if you’ve been living at their facility for at least three years and your money runs out, they don’t kick you out. Handmaker also doesn’t look like your typical assisted living home. With long, wide hallways, tall ceilings and a plethora of windows, it almost has a university feel to it.

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This Man’s Shocking Story of Elder Financial Abuse Will Make You Hug Your Grandparents

3 ex-CNAs won’t serve jail time in elderly patient-abuse case at Johnson City nursing home

Three former CNAs who admitted spraying two Appalachian Christian Village nursing home patients with water to agitate them were denied judicial diversion, but won’t serve any jail time.

A fourth woman was granted diversion because she didn’t participate in the abuse. She was charged because even though she didn’t participate, she saw the abuse on one occasion and didn’t report it.

Rebecca Blevins, 39; Jessica Ketterman, 22; and Jennifer Ketterman, 20, all of Elizabethton, pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of willful abuse, neglect or exploitation of a dependent adult. Blevins was not eligible for diversion due to previous bad check convictions. At that same hearing, Amanda Adolphi, 33, Gray, pleaded guilty to failure to report the abuse.

In the plea agreements, the women were each given an 11 month, 29 day sentence, which will be served on probation. Adolphi was the only one granted diversion. After her year of probation, the conviction can be erased from her record.

A fifth woman, Bonita Scott, 51, Chuckey, was also charged in the incident, but she pleaded guilty to her case shortly after being charged.

“This case tears me up,” said Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood. “We have over here four, probably very nice people, who have been contributing members of society. It’s inscrutable.”

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3 ex-CNAs won’t serve jail time in elderly patient-abuse case at Johnson City nursing home

Financial Elder Abuse Stealing by Any Other Name

Sacramento, CA:
The state of California has one of the toughest and broadest laws protecting against Financial Elder Abuse in the US. So broad, in fact, that under financial elder abuse law if a business were to dispense the wrong change to a consumer and the individual was in a position to prove he was 65 or over, then the issuance of wrongful change could be interpreted as financial abuse of the elderly.

Sadly, according to a former professional in the salon industry who returned to school at 65 and became an attorney, elder abuse financial exploitation is becoming quite common, and very serious. “It never dawned on me that this might be a crime,” Helen Karr, today the elder abuse special assistant in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, said in comments published in The San Francisco Chronicle (The Chronicle 3/29/13). “It wasn’t until I became an attorney that financial abuse was included as a crime of elder abuse. It is just plain stealing.”

That stealing, more often than not, originates from within a senior’s own family.

Karr reveals that in her former career as a supervisor at beauty salons in department stores, she would overhear scores of conversations between hairdressers and their elderly clients lamenting the loss of funds to acquaintances, caregivers and even family members – loans that were never repaid.

Now 78, Karr has spearheaded various initiatives in an attempt to better protect the elderly from those who might otherwise take advantage of them. One of her initiatives was to spearhead an elderly financial abuse law in California that requires banks and financial institutions to report suspicion of elder financial abuse.

Part of the financial exploitation elderly problem is that medical science is allowing people to live longer than they used to. And while an individual may have more prolonged physical longevity than a previous generation, their mental capacity may not keep pace.

Hence, the upswing in financial elderly abuse.

It’s not just family or so-called friends either, Karr said in The Chronicle. Financial planners and vendors of financial products can smell an easy sale and commission through the issuance of a product not at all appropriate for a trusting senior of advanced age.

“An annuity can be a good investment,” Karr told The Chronicle. “But if you’re already in your 70s and an insurance salesman tries to sell you one, and the fine print is that you can’t take out your money for 20 years without a very steep penalty, that’s an inappropriate product for that person.”

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Financial Elder Abuse Stealing by Any Other Name

Woman Jailed On Charges She Abused An Elderly Female Relative

LEVITTOWN, Pennsylvania — An eastern Pennsylvania woman has been jailed on charges she abused an elderly female relative by poking the woman in the eyes and squeezing the woman so hard around the rib cage that she was bruised and unable to move for days.

Online court records don’t list an attorney for 49-year-old Patricia Ann Fitzgerald, of Falls Township, Bucks County.

The Bucks County Courier-Times reports the incident happened July 19, but Fitzgerald wasn’t arraigned on aggravated assault and other charges until Tuesday, because police had to investigate the older woman’s claims.

Police say the alleged victim waited three days to report the attack because she couldn’t move due to the injuries, which left her with severe bruises on her ribs, scratches on her back, and severely swollen eyes.

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Police charge eastern Pa. woman with poking elderly relative in eyes, squeezing her very hard

Linda Kincaid Reports: CMS Reminder: Access and Visitation Rights in long-term care

July 15, 2013

Center for Medicare Services (CMS) took a giant leap toward curbing elder abuse and protecting personal rights of long term care residents. On June 28, 2013, CMS issued the following “reminder” to State Survey Agency Directors.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is issuing a reminder of current regulations and Guidance to Surveyors (Interpretive Guidelines) at 42 CFR, Part 483.10(j), F172, Access and Visitation Rights. This Guidance delineates the rights of LTC residents to receive family and non-family visitors. Facilities must provide 24-hour access to all individuals visiting with the consent of the resident.

Although prohibited by state and federal law, many long term care facilities deny their residents the right to have visitors. Some facilities deny all visitors, phone calls, and mail.

In San Bernardino County, California, Wildwood Canyon Villa isolated Jean Swope for fifteen months. Jean’s right to visitation was restored by a restraining order against isolation. That effort cost family $70K in legal fees.

 

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CMS Reminder: Access and Visitation Rights in long-term care

Elderly Abused at 1 in 3 Nursing Homes: Report

Reports of serious, physical, sexual and verbal abuse are “numerous” among the nation’s nursing homes, according to a congressional report released today.

The study, prepared by the minority (Democratic and Independent) staff of the Special Investigations Division of the House Government Reform Committee, finds that 30 percent of nursing homes in the United States — 5,283 facilities — were cited for almost 9,000 instances of abuse over a recent two-year period, from January 1999 to January 2001.

Common problems included untreated bedsores, inadequate medical care, malnutrition, dehydration, preventable accidents, and inadequate sanitation and hygiene, the report said.

Many of the abuse violations caused harm to the residents, the report said.

In 1,601 cases, the abuse violations were serious enough “to cause actual harm to residents or to place the residents in immediate jeopardy of death or serious injury,” it said.

“What we have found is shocking,” says Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the committee’s minority leader, who instructed the staff to do the study.

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Elderly Abused at 1 in 3 Nursing Homes: Report