Israel's first national survey of elder abuse has said that 18.4% of elderly people reported being abused in the previous year. Rates of neglect were among the highest in the world, while rates of physical and sexual abuse and limitation of freedom were similar to those in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Hong Kong. Economic exploitation and verbal violence were more common in Israel than in many of those countries.
The types of abuse were neglect (18.0%); verbal (8.0%) or physical or sexual abuse (2.0%); limitation of freedom (2.7%), or economic exploitation (6.6%) by a spouse or adult child. Some people had been abused in more than one way.
Elderly Arab women were most vulnerable to physical abuse and limitation of freedom. Ten per cent of Arab women complained of physical and sexual violence against them during the past 12 months (compared to 2.1% of Jewish women), while 6.7% of Arab women complained of limitation of their freedom (compared to 2.6% of Jewish women). Overall 40% of Arab women complained of one or more types of abuse or neglect, compared to 33.9% of Jewish women. The lower rates of abuse among men bring the average overall down to 18.4%.
Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, said that the document "tore off a mask and showed an ugly face of Israeli society and testifies to an insufferable phenomenon that demands taking urgent measures."
The research team was headed by Professor Zvi Eisikovits and Professor Ariella Lowenstein of the University of Haifa's faculty of social welfare and health studies. The survey, initiated by the Association for the Planning and Development of Services for the Aged in Israel, the National Insurance Institute, and the university, studied 1045 urban residents of retirement age without dementia, who were not living in institutions and who constituted a representative sample of city dwellers.
Professor Eisikovits said that he and his colleagues were shocked by their findings, as Israel regarded itself as an intimate family oriented society, and that abuse in geriatric institutions was probably even more widespread. Politicians and commentators have expressed sorrow at the results. Veneration of elderly people is a central tenet of Jewish and Islamic tradition.
Few people who reported abuse had complained to the authorities, apparently out of fear, feelings of love for the abuser, reluctance to get their spouse or child into trouble, inaccessibility, or the belief that nobody would help them. An immediate result of the survey was the establishment of a free phone line for reporting abuse, but recommendations included empowerment programmes and safeguards to prevent financial exploitation by family members.
The report showed that abuse by non-related caregivers in the home, many of them foreign workers, was rare. Financial and other abuse of elderly people was especially prevalent when adult children were unemployed, separated, or divorced or were dependent on alcohol or drugs.
The researchers said that, unlike in many surveys of elder abuse done abroad, they interviewed respondents face to face in homes, rather than by telephone, and chose a representative sample of the general population and did not concentrate only on problematic sectors.
An English-language executive summary of the report will be available from 11 March on the website of ESHEL, the American Joint Distribution Committee's Association at www.eshelnet.org.il