Abused seniors turn to Alameda court for help
By Kristina Horton Flaherty
Staff Writer
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Judge Conger |
The terrified, elderly woman stood facing the judge. From the other side of
court, her son angrily shouted that he could speak for his mother, that she
wanted to drop the case. But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Julie Conger
recalls looking directly into the frightened woman’s eyes and saying:
“I want to hear from you.”
With the court’s elder abuse case manager holding one hand and a Spanish
interpreter holding the other, the besieged woman finally admitted that she
wanted her abusive son out of her house. She needed, she said, “to get
free.”
It was just one of many heart-wrenching scenes played out in a special elder
abuse court session — believed to be a first of its kind in the state
— held once a week in an Oakland courtroom.
At 11 a.m. every Friday, a growing stream of senior citizens have been making
their way to Conger’s third-floor courtroom. Some arrive by wheelchair
or with the help of a cane. Some are hard of hearing and have to strain to follow
the proceedings. And many are tormented by their decision to seek protection
from a dangerously abusive son, daughter, nephew or grandchild.
Conger first launched her elder abuse calendar nearly three years ago because
many senior citizens had trouble showing up by 8:30 a.m. and then waiting around
in a packed courtroom. “They would get lost,” she said. “Sometimes
they’re in wheelchairs. It just wasn’t accommodating.”
Initially, she says, just one or two seniors showed up for the special court
session. These days, however, as many as 14 or 15 seniors come to court seeking
protective orders each Friday.
They may have been beaten, watched their life savings disappear, endured threatening
tirades, suffered neglect or regularly locked themselves in their rooms to protect
themselves from a drug-crazed relative or “caregiver.” Still, a
mix of emotional issues, diminished physical capacities, generational differences,
isolation, fear and an intimidating court system has too often kept elder abuse
behind closed doors, advocates say.
Alameda County Superior Court — with Conger’s prompting and the
help of an Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) grant — has taken
some innovative steps to better assist the elderly.
These days, court clerks offer extra help to those filling out petitions for
elder abuse protective orders. (A 1999 change in the law opened the door to
this new type of restraining order.) Those seeking such orders do not have to
wait the usual 24 hours to obtain a judge’s signature. Instead, clerks
personally deliver each request to Conger, who reviews it immediately —
sometimes while presiding over a felony trial.
“It occurred to me that elders should be treated a little more carefully
and with a little more respect, and should not be made to come back,”
she says.
The court’s assistance does not end there.
To obtain a longer-lasting protective order, the senior must return to court
several weeks later for a hearing. In the meantime, Conger instructs the clerks
to contact various social or legal services, such as victim witness assistance
advocates from the district attorney’s elder abuse unit, if the case warrants
it.
And Marina Jimenez, the court’s AOC grant-funded elder abuse case manager,
steps in. She interviews the elderly person, other family members and, in many
cases, the abusive relative or caregiver as well. She makes referrals to various
resources. She runs criminal background checks. She arranges transportation
to court hearings. She can set up a telephone hearing from Conger’s court
chambers if the elder is housebound or hospitalized.
One recent Friday, she got word that an asthmatic senior outside the courthouse
could not make it up the ramp. The man, driven to court by a neighbor, was seeking
a restraining order against his son. The son, who had been jailed for setting
his father’s house on fire, had recently called to say, “I’m
coming home.”
Jimenez helped the man, who was in his late 80s, fill out the petition. Then
she walked it inside to the judge’s courtroom for a signature.
Many see Jimenez’ role as crucial in what are often complex situations
muddied by split family loyalties, an abuser’s substance abuse problems,
mental health issues, financial questions and a vulnerable senior citizen who
could be in jeopardy.
“She finds out what’s really going on in these cases,” said
Robin Yamate, a lawyer at Legal Assistance for Seniors in Oakland.
Civil filings for elder abuse protective orders are on the rise. In Alameda
County, such filings have shot up from two or three filings in 1999-2000 (the
first year of the new law) to a current rate of roughly 250 a year, says Dr.
Susan Hanks, chief of the court’s Families and Children’s Bureau.
Yamate, who has represented the elderly in abuse cases for more than a decade,
recalls a time when such clients faced even more obstacles. “We would
have a hard time getting them to decide that they wanted a restraining order,”
she said. “Then, once they made that decision, it was difficult procedurally.
And if they went (to court) by themselves, they would frequently get so discouraged
that they would end up not doing it.”
Now, “once they get in the courthouse door, they will get help,”
she says.
They are likely to find a judge who is willing to tailor the protective order
to fit the situation. “It’s really difficult for our clients to
deal with getting a restraining order against a child or a grandchild or a great
grandchild, people who they have loved and raised,” Yamate said.
“There are situations where no contact is absolutely the only solution,”
Yamate said. But some situations are not so clear-cut.
Take the case of a pair of aging brothers who sought restraining orders against
each other. As it turned out, both men lived rent-free in their elderly mother’s
home. The woman’s 15-year-old granddaughter lived there as well. To avoid
homelessness, the brothers agreed to certain conditions and returned periodically
to Conger’s courtroom for follow-up hearings.
“The house got fixed up,” Jimenez recalls. “The brother who
was using drugs stopped using drugs. The granddaughter was happier. And the
mother was happy because neither one of her sons was homeless.”
As the court’s elder abuse case manager, Jimenez splits her time between
Conger’s courtroom and the elder abuse calendars in other courts in the
county.
“Elder abuse cases typically involve complicated facts with subtle nuances
that older litigants may have difficulty conveying,” Fremont Hall of Justice
Commissioner Tom Surh said in a recent report. “With the elder abuse case
manager available in the courtroom, I am much more likely to be aware of important
information that is essential to making orders that are helpful and appropriate
for the elders and their families.”
Statistics suggest that between 500,000 and 5 million senior citizens a year
are abused, neglected or exploited in America, usually at the hands of a family
member. California’s Adult Protective Services Program (APS) alone receives
some 92,000 reports of elder or dependent adult abuse annually. And yet, concluded
one legislative subcommittee recently, such victims often fall through the cracks
in a fragmented system and fail to find their way to appropriate legal resources.
In Alameda County, Jimenez has developed a list of key “point people”
at APS, Legal Assistance for Seniors and the district attorney’s elder
abuse unit, among others. Whenever she has contact with a new potential victim,
she says, she e-mails everyone “so no one is falling through any holes”
any more.
“The system that is in place is now connected,” she says. “We
just needed to have a connecting source.”
The payoff, some say, extends beyond the court’s civil elder abuse calendar.
One recent afternoon, for example, Jimenez got a call from a concerned judge
regarding a civil case involving a 93-year-old man’s property and two
younger relatives who were seeking access to it. A court hearing for a civil
injunction requested by the younger relatives was to take place in the judge’s
courtroom 45 minutes later. The paperwork appeared to be in order. But “something
wasn’t right,” Jimenez recalled.
Jimenez e-mailed her contacts at various agencies. Less than an hour later,
the judge had learned of extensive APS and district attorney’s office
investigations linked to the case. The relatives’ apparent “end-run”
around the system hit a roadblock.
Alameda County’s elder access program has, in part, been funded through
a two-year AOC pilot project designed to evaluate existing court programs that
“facilitate access to the judicial system for the elderly.” But
with the $135,000 grant running out in December, the court staff is now scrambling
to find alternative funding.
Many credit Conger for the court’s recent focus on the elderly. She has
helped give presentations at numerous senior centers and community agencies
and she personally called more than 20 police stations to obtain an elder abuse
liaison from each.
“She started it and, with her own sort of gumption, kept it going,”
says Francine Byrne, an AOC research analyst.
In her courtroom chambers recently, Conger dialed the number of a disabled,
legally blind Oakland woman who had requested a court hearing by telephone.
The woman’s elder abuse petition depicted a nightmarish life under a
caregiver’s control: In a surprise home visit, an APS worker had found
the 70-year-old diabetic woman hungry and shoeless. A pan of rotten chicken
fat sat on the stove. The smell of spent crack cocaine permeated the air. A
man and a disheveled woman emerged from a filthy bedroom and quickly left. Alone
with the APS worker, the frightened woman wept and said, “Thank God. I
knew he would send somebody to help me. I’ve prayed and prayed for so
long.” She had been repeatedly hit and kept in her room, she said, and
described being walked around the neighborhood and portrayed as the caregiver’s
sick grandmother in a ploy to beg for money.
The judge granted stay-away orders against the caregiver and the caregiver’s
mother and sister. Outside court, two of them categorically denied any mistreatment
of the disabled woman or any drug use in her home.
Sometimes, Conger says, the accounts of elder abuse move her to tears. “You
see people at the conclusion of their lives not having the support, caring,
concern and assistance that they deserve,” Conger said. “And it
tears your heart apart.”
Oakland senior citizen Dorothy Brooks has nothing but praise for Conger and
those in the system who recently helped her during a difficult time. “I
had a member of my family who had a problem,” she said. “I felt
that my Christian way of life was enough. Instead, the older he got, the worse
it got. I needed help and I needed it bad . . . Out of desperation, I reached
out and help was right there.”
Brooks, represented by a Legal Assistance for Seniors attorney, said the entire
process of obtaining a restraining order moved more quickly and smoothly than
she expected. “I’ve never been treated better,” said Brooks,
who did not want to discuss the details of her situation. “It felt like
they got in there with me. It’s like my problem was their problem.”
Appearing in Conger’s courtroom last March, Brooks was touched by the
judge’s understanding as well. The message that she got from the judge,
she says, was: “I know what you’ve been going through. It’s
all over now.”
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