BRIC-TV

Ayana Robertson, an attorney with the foreclosure prevention project at Brooklyn Legal Services

New York City is getting older. From 2000 to 2010, the population here over age 60 grew six times faster than the city overall, and all the projections are that we’ll see an even grayer five boroughs in the future.

Concerns about elder abuse are rising along with the number of senior citizens. According to a 2011 state government report, an estimated quarter of a million senior citizens in the Empire State were victims of some form of elder abuse (financial, physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect). But there is a large gap between the abuse that is reported to authorities and what people report on surveys.

As part of Aging Week on BK Live, we discussed what elder abuse is and what we can do about it with Bobbie Sackman, associate executive director of public policy at LiveOn-NY; Cheryl Lee, Brooklyn project director of the Elder Abuse Program at JASA; and Ayana Robertson, an attorney with the foreclosure prevention project at Brooklyn Legal Services.