Sad to say, the elderly in our society are often the victims of violent crimes.
Early in May this year, four young men burst into the house of a 91-year old Ottawa resident, the man's home for 52 years. They bound the man, who was just out of hospital and recovering from a stroke, to a basement telepost. Then they ransacked the house, trashing anything they could not steal. Not enough, they beat the man with an axe handle. His son found him 18 hours later, still alive, still bound to the telepost, with his mouth taped. He'd suffered severe bruising, a black eye, and two broken ribs.
A few years earlier, an Ottawa pensioner was stabbed to death in her apartment foyer. The victim: she was coming home from a whist night at her neighborhood church. The killer: a known predator off his medication, but in this country (Canada) even a stone killer can refuse to take the medication that keeps the lid on his madness. That's law here, to protect his "human rights."
In older cultures, such as Chinese and Aboriginal, the elderly were (and in many cases still are) revered. Elders had (have) much to teach and youth acknowledg(ed) that they had much to learn. Not so for the past few generations of North Americans. We suffer a cult of youth that, at bottom, is presumptive enough to envision physical immortality. The downside isn't just lack of wisdom. It's the rejection of the value of the elderly, with the consequence that they become dehumanized. This perception opens the doors to crime and, no fools, many of the elderly know it instinctively. They lock their doors, especially in the city.
Sure, the newspapers expressed outrage over the ordeal of the 91-year old man and devoted considerable space to the story, and without doubt, that kind of story sells newspapers. But do they ever assign an investigative reporter to look at root causes, say societal ethos?
Generally, what the newspapers assign as human interest related to crimes these days is mostly drivel. When was the last time you read about a villain who wasn't abused as a child and who didn't "seem" lately to be straightening out his/her problems? So, this killing was just a glitch? But we're used to that. Let's review some stats.
Across the board, according to a U.S. Department of Justice study done in 1992, nearly a generation ago, crimes against the elderly (64+ years) were lower per capita than for people between 12-30 years old. The margin is substantial enough to be significant, even taking into account uneven reporting and other anomalies that plague methodologists (number crunchers).
In 2003, the state of Idaho did a somewhat kindred study, and its findings generally mirrored national conclusions. In fact, in Idaho, the elderly fared somewhat better. Key to all the findings, however, was that for elderly people, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to become a victim. The same, by the way, applied to the 12-30 year old range.
That said, given the increasing gap between rich and poor, and the gap between "youth forever" and "wise but old," I believe we can expect a statistical shift in our lifetimes. When the wisdom of age and experience is not respected, the truly young will suffer too -- increasing violence among youth may be an indicator that they are already adrift.
Crimes against the elderly should be treated with maximum severity. The elderly transmit our cultural values. To dismiss or pay only lip service to them is to dismiss the world in which we live, but with no place to go.
