Judge
John Leventhal of the New York Appellate Division and attorney Jennifer White of Futures without Violence describe the misconceptions people have about the
elderly as both victims and perpetrators of crime. This is one of three podcasts produced in collaboration with the
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi, I'm Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation and
this is one of several special podcasts that the Center is doing with the support and assistance of the National
Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, which is hosting its 74th conference this month in New York City, July
2011. I'm speaking with Judge John Leventhal, who is currently an associate justice of the
New York State Appellate Division and who, before he was appointed to the Appellate Division by the governor, founded
and served for many years as the presiding judge of the Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court which was, in fact, the
first felony domestic violence court in the country. And I'm also with Jennifer White, who’s
an attorney with Futures Without Violence, which has recently changed its name from the Family Violence Prevention
Fund. And that organization is based in San Francisco and it’s dedicated to preventing domestic, dating, and sexual
violence. Thank you both for being with me today. JUDGE LEVENTHAL:
Thank you for having us. JENNIFER WHITE: Thank you. WOLF:
And today we're gonna focus on elder abuse so I thought—and you're both presenting on that topic here at
the conference. Elder abuse, I’ve heard a lot about recently. It seems to be in the news more and it's certainly
a lot more in conversations among judicial practitioners and law enforcement, but I think a lot of people may not
fully understand what the term means and so Ms. White, I thought maybe we could start out by you just defining elder
abuse. What does the term refer to, exactly? WHITE: Sure. A lot
of times when you hear elder abuse, particularly in the media they're referring strictly to financial exploitation.
But what we know is that more common is abuse that's perpetrated usually by somebody with whom the elder has
some expectation of trust, so usually a family member or caregiver. It includes any of several forms of maltreatment,
including physical and sexual violence, emotional and psychological abuse, including also financial exploitation.
WOLF: And do we have a sense of how widespread this is? I mean just
because people are talking about it more, you hear about it more, is that because there's a greater incidence
of it or a greater awareness of it? WHITE: Well, for one thing,
because the baby boomer population in 2006 hit 75 million over 60 years old. So I think that there has been a lot
of renewed focused on elder abuse because of that population coming into their senior years. The reality is that
there's not a lot of really strong, good prevalence data. What we do know, according to the national elder abuse
incident survey is that elder abuse is actually about 85 percent of cases go unreported. We are seeing rising numbers
of cases being reported, but we still have this huge gap of victims who are not reporting. WOLF:
Judge Leventhal, when a case or an issue involving elder abuse does make it into the court system, does it pose unique
challenges? LEVENTHAL: Well sure, we have a lot of stereotypes in
society regarding ageism and the elderly, that they're imagining things, that they don't know what they're
talking about. People sometimes confuse lack of good hearing with lack of credibility, and ability to think and be
aware of what's going on around them. So that's a challenge not only to the courts,
