Abstract
Few researchers have claimed that abuse at an earlier stage in life may be a risk factor for elder abuse later in life. Indeed, the elder abuse literature frequently highlights that the social learning model causes abuse in later life, the argument being that abusers learn how to be violent from witnessing or suffering from violence. The aim of this research was to test the hypothesis that if an older person was abused earlier in their lives, they were more likely to be abused as older adults. A national telephone survey was conducted to estimate the prevalence of five forms of elder abuse in community dwelling older Canadians who were 55 years and older. A representative, stratified sample of 8,163 Canadians completed the survey, the largest study to date. Information was collected about socio-demographic factors, health, wealth, risk factors for abuse, and prevalence for the usual five subtypes of abuse. Unlike other prevalence studies, a life course perspective was the guiding theoretical framework. The analyses included descriptive statistics about the sample, bivariate analyses correlating the risk factors with abuse and a logistic regression model with the main the predictors of abuse. The results showed, in order of importance, higher depression scores as measured on the C-DES, having been abused as an adult (25–54), a child (1–17) a youth (18–24), having higher unmet ADL/IAD needs, not feeling safe with those closest to respondent, geographical location; being single compared to being married and lastly, being female were significant (p ≥ .001) predictors.