Part 2 of 2. See Part 1.
Rong Xiaoqing
Sing Tao Daily
The scourge of family elder abuse affects as many as to 2 million people in
the United States, as well as up to 5 million seniors subjected to financial
exploitation.
“Chinese culture gives higher value to the unity of the family than the
individual themselves. It is uncharacteristic for Chinese parents to formally
charge their children for abuse,” said Xinqi Dong, a researcher at the Rush
Institute for Healthy Aging, in Chicago.
For this reason, said Dong, “it is more difficult to discover such cases and
provide help.” These seniors often remain silent about their plight.
One of these silent victims is Jinfu Liu, age 75.
Skinny with receding gray hair, the quiet Liu would just look like an ordinary
Asian man, except for the scar on his cheek. The scar makes him extremely
embarrassed in front of his elderly friends because it was put there by his
son’s fist.
In the past two years, his son has beat Liu five times. “Once he punched me,
and I fell on the floor and fainted. When I woke up, it took me a long time to
figure out why I way lying on the floor,” said Liu.
Every time he was attacked, Liu told himself he’d call the police next time.
But he never did. If the latest attack had not left him with a bleeding cheek,
he would not have sought help from Gin Lee, a specialist at the Chinese
Americans Restoring Elders (CARE) Project at the Indochina Community Center.
However, when Lee suggested helping Liu apply for a restraining order from the
court, the abused senior declined.
“I don’t want leave my son a bad record. It will affect his future,” said
Liu. “My son was actually a good boy when he was young. He respected me a lot,
and I also secretly favored him over his siblings.”
Lee was not surprised. “Many Asian seniors like to keep silent when they are
abused by their children. Even when they have to ask for help, they won’t like
the cops or the court to get involved. No matter how they are treated by their
children, they always think for the children,” she said.
New Problems
“Everyone knows revering seniors is a significant part of the Asian
culture, so the other side is easily neglected, said Tazuko Shibusawa, an
associate professor of social work at New York University, who studies issues
affecting Asian seniors.
“In many Asian countries like Japan, people hadn’t known the existence of
senior abuse until the recent years,” Shibusawa went on.
In one study, the Rush Institute’s Dong found that willful neglect—such as
refusing to provide the person food or medicine--is the most common type of
abuse among Chinese seniors, followed by emotional abuse and financial abuse.
Physical abuse is rare. Although this was a small study, these findings are no
different than among whites.
“The more seniors rely on their adult children, the more likely they are to
become abuse victims,” said Peter Cheng, executive director of Indochina
Sino-American Community Center, which operates the only senior protection
program in the Chinese community in New York.
Cheng continued, “Many Asian seniors hold green cards sponsored by their
children, and they don’t speak much English and have few other relatives or
friends they can go to. This makes them more vulnerable than seniors in the
mainstream community.”
Dong noted that in addition to experiencing stress from immigration in later
life, filial piety, although highly valued in Asian cultures, can become a fuse
for abuse.
“Filial piety requires children to obey the parents and support the parents
financially. These are not the obligations of children in the American culture.
When the young people cannot meet the expectation of the seniors, it often leads
to conflicts,” said Dong.
Pauline Yeung, an attorney with Grimaldi and Yeung, a New York law firm
specializing in aging and disability, said, “In most of our senior abuse
cases, the victim is exposed during the dispute among siblings over the assets
of the senior’s. Few Asian seniors would come to us themselves,” said Yeung.
Adult protection specialists in other cities voice the same frustrations. For
example, Self-Help for Elderly, a service agency in San Francisco’s Chinatown,
takes on about three elder abuse cases every month. They refer most cases to the
city’s Adult Protective Services agency, to which social workers are mandated
to report such cases.
“It’s very rare to see Asian seniors come to us to make complaints,” said
Vivien Wong, Self Help for the Elderly’s director of social services.
Community Responsibility
Other than the issue of saving face and concerns for their adult children,
the silence of Asian victims also stems from their ignorance of the concept of
senior abuse. Many times, they don’t even realize they’ve become victims.
Attorney Akiko Takeshita, observed, “When abused, many Asian seniors would
think this is their fate, or they’d say, ‘My children are rude to me.’”
Takeshita, a lawyer with Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a legal
assistance organization in the San Francisco Bay area, continued, “But if your
children take away your jewelry or beat you up, it is not simply ‘being
rude.’”
Important as it is, raising awareness about elder abuse is not an easy task.
Many seniors don’t like to attend workshops on elder abuse because it might
signal that they are victims—“face losing” in their perspective.
Service providers have to be creative. “When we offer a workshop, we always
tell the audience that this may not be for them, but they can help others after
they learn more about senior abuse,” said Vivien Wong of Self-Help for
Elderly.
A culturally competent approach is the key to victim protection. “Many abusers
are family members, and the Asians believe what happens in the family stays in
the family,” Takeshita said. Because victims often don’t want to punish
their abusers, Takeshita said, service providers also need to work with the
adult children, “so when we are out of the picture, they still can live
together.”
Seeming Servitude
Sometimes, a social worker’s understanding of the victim’s language and
culture can save a life. Ask 67-year-old Yuying Sun. She married a Chinese
American and moved to the New York five years ago, but Sun said her husband and
his children treated her like a servant.
After her husband beat her, she was sent to a mental health evaluation institute
in a hospital in the Bronx, thanks to his son’s 911 call and false report to
the police.
Sun, who doesn’t speak English, was placed in a locked unit with mentally ill
patients and no interpreter. Lee, of the Indochina Community Center, heard about
her case through a services organization in the Bronx and went to the hospital
to see her.
Sun told her she was thinking of hanging herself. “I thought my life was
totally collapsed and could not see any hope. If she hadn’t rescued me, I’d
have been dead now,” said Sun, who has since been fighting in court for her
rights.
“We may only be a small program, but we want people in the community to
understand, if you and I don’t stand up to fight against senior abuse, many
lives of the seniors would be withering in silence,” said Lee.
_________________
Rong Xiaoqing wrote this two-part series for Sing
Tao Daily (New York) with support from a Dennis A. Hunt Health
Journalism Grant from The California
Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, operated by the USC Annenberg
School of Journalism. They were later published by New
America Media, which gives RedwoodAge.com permission to publish them
here. Names of abuse victims have been altered at the request of the
interviewees. These stories are published on RedwoodAge with permission
from New America Media.
