Vol 30, No. 6, #2. Elder Abuse: Where We Stand.

• Author: Author: Pamela J. Murphy, B.A., J.D.

Wyoming Bar Journal

2007.

Vol 30, No. 6, #2.

Elder Abuse: Where We Stand

Wyoming Bar JournalVol 30, No. 6, #2Issue: December, 2007Author: Pamela J. Murphy, B.A., J.D.Elder Abuse: Where We StandA few years ago while at a huge chain "everything" store in my small, rural community in Kentucky, not far from my urban hometown of Louisville, I stopped in my tracks and looked...no, make that listened... to my immediate surroundings. It was late at night, when I like to go to shop without the ceaseless begging from my children. Men and women around me were stocking shelves and there were a remarkable number of parents with children there. An announcement came over the public address system and I recognized only a few of the words spoken. The announcement was spoken in Spanish and followed by an English interpretation. There was a reason for that: most of the customers in the store that night spoke Spanish as their first language.

Now mind you, I make no statements about immigration, border policies, or even what should be the "official" language of the United States of America. I was simply stunned that in my little community, I was surrounded by more people who did not speak English than by people who did. When I asked a stocker where a certain item could be located, she looked at me, shook her head and said "I don't speak..." She looked pained as her words trailed off, and in my usual mother-of-the-world way I patted her arm, smiled reassuringly and said "That's okay."

Having worked for several years with the frail elderly and in regulating those who provide health care all across our Commonwealth, it didn't take long (minutes, actually) for me to begin to wonder how this same scenario might have played out for a person whose physical or mental health had started to slip, for whom the importance of answering the simple question I asked was not a convenience, but a real necessity. I began to realize how many people might not have been able to so easily brush aside the inability to communicate, especially where reliance becomes a matter of survival.

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