Social Media Video Sparks Outcry Over Elder Abuse

A video started making rounds on social media today of a man pleading with authorities for help as an elderly woman was reportedly being abused. The unidentified person claimed to have witnessed several instances of the golden citizen being abused this week. Ix-Chel Poot, executive director of the National Council on Aging, told Love News that she saw the video; however, the council is a policy implementation body and does not respond to incidents of elder abuse. However, she explained that the video has been forwarded the video to the Women and Families Support Department in the Ministry of Human Development. 

Ix-Chel Poot, Executive Director, National Council on Ageing: “Unfortunately, we do know that there are cases of elder abuse and this comes from many reasons. If we would look at the results of our last census, we’d see that the dependency ratio for older persons has actually increased by about 2%. So 8.5% of all our older people are dependent upon someone else for their entire care. There are many challenges that come along with that, but that also means that many older people are extremely vulnerable to ill treatment and to feel trapped in this situation. But we at the council strongly condemn all types of abuse and mistreatment of older persons. Older people represent a very vulnerable pocket of our population, but they are also the foundation upon which we build our society. These are the people who have come before us, have provided for us, have created the lives that many of us are living. And so to take advantage of someone in this vulnerable state, to ill-treat them, to hurt them, to squander their assets, this is totally unacceptable. And it is one of the reasons why we have been working with all the legislative reforms, one of the reasons why we are pushing for legislation to protect older persons. But for anyone who considers abusing an older person, I just want them to know that the day is coming when they will be in that position. And we must always think that when I am older, how would I want to be treated and treat others in the way that we would like to be treated.”

We’ll be following up with the Ministry on this developing story.