History Main / ElderAbuse

* In the ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' episode "Birds of Prey", one AssholeVictim is a middle-aged man who lives with his {{Maiden Aunt}}s and orders them around their own house, makes them wait on him, and steals their pension money while they watch. So, when he comes home bruised after being hit by a car, one aunt realizes he's more badly injured than he realizes, but [[MurderByInaction puts him to bed and leaves him to die in his sleep]].

When you hear the term "victim of abuse" who do you picture? Someone being beaten or otherwise mistreated by [[DomesticAbuse their partner]], a child or teenager being [[AbusiveParents harmed, threatened,]] or [[ParentalNeglect neglected by their parents]]? Yes these are all real, and horrible, truths. However, there are others who can frequently find themselves victims of abuse, and what is one such group in society that does often find themselves in this scenario?

The elderly. Older people are often vulnerable, especially those who have Alzheimers or some other form of dementia, or who have communication issues which can make it difficult or even impossible for them to speak out against their abusers. Even older people who don't have dementia or other issues can sometimes find it difficult to get out of such a scenario, especially if their abuser is a primary caregiver and they have mobility problems. Then there's the fact that their abusers could be their children, and their natural parental instinct to protect their child, and therefore resist the urge to report the situation to the authorities, could very well be in play.

Like any other abuse there are several different types of elder abuse. The most frequent definition is given as [[http://www.who.int/ageing/projects/elder_abuse/en/ "a single, or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust which causes harm or distress to an older person"]] and the subtypes are by and large the same ones as within AbusiveParents and DomesticAbuse. As with those, they can overlap:

* Physical Abuse - hitting, striking, spitting at, or other physical force used against an elderly person
* Verbal Abuse - swearing at, belittling, and demeaning an older person
* Emotional and Psychological Abuse - manipulating someone's emotions so that they do things for you, or making them feel terrible about themselves, playing mind games
* Financial Abuse - stealing money or valuables, either directly or by blackmail or coercion

* ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'': For fuck's sake, don't abuse the elderly in front of Kazuma Kiryu. You likely won't live to even be elderly yourself if he finds out, because if he does, he'll pound you into hamburger. Just like [[WouldHurtAChild child abuse]], elder abuse makes him really angry.

* ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'': Eventually Francis gets Commandant Edwin Spangler fired as the head of his MilitarySchool but then gets him placed in a retirement home instead where he proceeds to engage in elder abuse as per his [[SadistTeacher sadist]] [[DrillSergeantNasty tendencies]].

* ''Series/TheUmbrellaAcademy'': The Sparrow's drug Reginald. Justified on their part because [[spoiler:Hargreeves' adopted them as pawns to use to reset the universe the way he wants it.]] He treats his children about as well as you would expect from that description. And then you throw in the training from hell. [[spoiler: (In Klaus's case actually designed to make him afraid of his own power rather than give him any control over it.)]]

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode "Excelsis Dei" was about an eponymous nursing home where the residents were often mentally and sometimes physically abused by the staff. A few get a rather supernatural form of revenge though.

* ''Series/WalkerTexasRanger'': Played more seriously than usual in Season 6's "[[Recap/WalkerTexasRangerS6E5ForgottenPeople Forgotten People]]", where the Rangers take on a corrupt nursing home administrator and her team of rogue doctors and e-commerce orderlies who had been using the patients as guinea pigs for illegal experiments in the hopes of putting variations of an outlawed Alzheimer's drug on the market.

* ''LightNovel/TheZashikiWarashiOfIntellectualVillage'' takes this to an extreme. One case revolves around people forcing their elderly parents out of their homes and into a rundown apartment. The company who own said apartment are part of the conspiracy and use magic to make everyone else in the neighbourhood hate the residents, on top of the mundane tactic of cutting off utilities to slowly but surely kill them.

* The depraved doctor Cioccolata in ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureGoldenWind'' used to psychologically torture elderly patients at a nursing home with the intention of driving them to suicide and [[SnuffFilm film their deaths]]. [[spoiler:[[CruelAndUnusualDeath He]] [[HateSink gets]] [[RasputinianDeath what]] [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown he]] [[KarmicDeath deserves]].]]