Emerging details reveal failures from local county agencies and state-contracted home care agencies in identifying elder abuse cases.
Multiple instances of elder abuse in Pennsylvania are highlighting concerns about the state’s ability to effectively oversee care for its vulnerable older population.
Last Friday, the office of Dave Sunday, Pennsylvania Attorney General (AG), announced that a York, PA couple has been charged with abandoning a care-dependent woman after the pair left her alone in a basement while they went on vacation.
The AG’s news release went on to describe how, earlier this month, the elderly victim was discovered locked in the corner of the couple’s basement, soiled and provided only hot dogs and two cups of water to sustain herself. The defendants – who are the victim’s daughter and son-in-law, 32-year-old Ashlee and Brian Brady – are also accused of financial exploitation based on $10,000 of the victim’s personal funds being taken to cover costs of items like vacations and alcohol.
Though the details of the abuse are disturbing on their own, the case has also revealed the ease with which a direct care worker employed by a state-contracted agency can perpetrate unchecked abuse against an older Pennsylvanian. Since 2020, Brian Brady has been paid with Medicaid dollars under the Department of Human Services’ Community Health Choices waiver program to provide services as the victim’s full-time caregiver.
“These alleged acts are truly disturbing on many levels — as these defendants were not only family, her own daughter and son-in-law, they were paid to look out for this victim’s best interests,” Sunday said in a press release. “I commend the investigators who uncovered this cycle of abusive and exploitative conduct. My office will continue to stand up for Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable residents.”
A Spotlight PA exposé on an additional case of elder abuse has further revealed state insufficiencies in protecting older Pennsylvanians. In late 2022, 75-year-old Luen Ng died due to long-term self-neglect even after repeated requests from her daughter to the local county agency to match her mother with life-saving services. When Ng was killed in a hit-and-run accident near her home, she became one of over 1,500 older Pennsylvanians to die in 2023 with a case still pending with the local aging agency.
According to Spotlight PA, across a seven-year period, the local aging agencies ignored between one third and half of suspected abuse or neglect cases beyond the permitted 20-day window for action.
These cases are not the first time the Commonwealth’s sluggish response to uncovering and handling elder abuse cases has been brought to light. In 2023, a specialist employed by the PA Department of Aging urged higher management to intervene in the local agencies’ failure to abide by necessary standards.
“We are not doing enough as a department to address this crisis,” the employee wrote in an email. “This is not okay. This is not moral.”
Likewise, retired department staff have pointed out that new leadership under the Shapiro administration has led to declining standards of how easily county agencies can pass muster.
