Elderly Sexual Abuse

This book represents the first attempt ever to study systematically the sexual abuse of elderly persons. The routine activities of elderly persons normally protect them from risks and abuses. Yet, paradoxically, in some settings elderly persons are in a very weak position to protect themselves. That’s why the current book is so useful.

—Marcus K. Felson, PhD, Professor, Texas State University – San Marcos

Despite the popular rhetoric of old age being the era of "golden years" the fact is that it is an age of higher vulnerability and enhanced susceptibility to various kinds of victimization. COVID-19 pandemic revealed to unsuspecting Canadians the dire and victimizing conditions in residential care homes where a large number of elderly Canadians languish for the remainder of their lives.

This book is a laudable effort to draw attention to sexual abuse of the elderly, a neglected type of victimization that surprisingly has not generated much research and only skimpy literature, due apparently to its hidden nature and prohibitive dark figure. The book is a valiant and commendable attempt to fill this glaring gap in what may be called "geronto victimology".

Most people usually think of sexual victimization of the elderly as an extremely rare occurence since older individuals do not seem to be ‘attractive’ sexual targets. To them the book’s revelations will come as a surprise. One finding the book reveals is that opportunity and routine activities play a more important role in triggering sexual victimization of the elderly than target sexual attractiveness does.

The book takes a phenomenological approach and pays attention to situational opportunities that create, facilitate or precipitate sexual abuse of elderly victims. And instead of the traditional, though futile, emphasis on the causes the authors are to be given credit for directing their attention to offenders’ motives . The authors should also be given credit for not engaging in endless regurgitation of causal factors and for taking instead a more dynamic approach focusing on routine activities, rational choice theories as well as the criminal event perspective.

The book ends with useful suggestions pertaining to the prevention of sexual abuse of the elderly in both residential care settings and the community at large and by offering some helpful tips for improving the investigation of elderly sexual victimization.

—Ezzat Fattah, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University

Elderly Sexual Abuse: Theory, Research, and Practice is a superb comprehensive compendium of current state of the art and science of this increasingly important subspeciality of elder abuse. This substantive textbook is indispensable to the serious practitioner. In addition to being readable and practically useful to law enforcement, academics, and geriatric health professionals, it will be invaluable to everyone who has an interest in the elderly sexual abuse victim, their offenders, and unique attributes of their crimes.

—Mark E. Safarik, criminal profiler (Ret.), FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, author of Spree Killers: Practical Classifications for Law Enforcement and Criminology