San Diego Nursing Home Abuse Attorney

   Senior citizens over the age of 80 are the highest-growing population in our country. This group is also at the greatest risk for neglect and abuse. Even more startling, is that abuse often exists inside their own homes.

   The State of California recognized 6 Main Categories of Elder Abuse:

• Physical Abuse is defined as physical force being inflicted upon bodies, causing injury, impairment, and pain. Physical abuse may take the form of striking, hitting, beating, shaking, shoving, pinching, pushing, and kicking. Other abuses under this category include force-feeding, physical punishment, and forced drug use. Signs of physical abuse include lacerations, cuts, welts, bruises, broken or fractured bones, marks made by a rope, internal bleeding, dislocated joints, medication overdoses, broken eyeglasses, and impromptu changes in behavior. Aggressive behavior by the caretaker, inappropriate joking, or the refusal to let family visit the elder alone are also signs of abuse.
• Sexual Abuse is defined as non-consented sexual contact with an alder. Sexual abuse may also include unwanted touching, forced nudity, rape, sexual assault, and sexually-explicit photography. Signs of sexual assault include bruising, anal or vaginal infections, or genital infections. Sexual assault can be especially destructive to not only the body, but to the psyche as well.
• Emotional or Psychological Abuse are acts (verbal or nonverbal) that cause, distress, anguish, or pain. These include verbal assaults, threats, insults, intimidation, humiliation, and harassment. Psychological stress is also brought on by isolating an elder for their family, avoiding verbal contact, or treating them like a child.
• Neglect is one of the most common abuses in the senior citizen community. Neglect involves the failure to fulfill essential duties that the elder needs to continue with daily life: malnutrition, dehydration, failure to pay bills, failure to aid in hygiene (if necessary), unsafe living conditions, or untreated health problems.
• Abandonment occurs often in the United States—when a family member or caretaker leaves the elder to wander in hospitals, doctor’s offices, grocery stores, or large public places. Elders may become lost, unstable, fall ill, or attacked in these perilous situations.
• Many elders suffer financial or material exploitation by their caretakers or family members. It involves the improper or illegal used of the elder’s funds, property, or assets.