
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 5, 1994                   TAG: 9403080022
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ABUSE CASES

MINDS REVOLT, stomachs turn, when we hear of abuse cases such as a recent one in Lynchburg, in which a 23-year-old blind and mentally retarded woman was denied food, restrained with socks and regularly beaten - by her foster mother.

The foster mother was the first convicted under a new state law that imposes criminal penalties for willful abuse of elderly or mentally incapacitated adults. She received the maximum punishment under the 1992 law: a year in jail.

But the abuse was so egregious - made more jarring by the foster mother's insistence that she'd done nothing wrong - that many found the punishment too light. Even the judge commented from the bench that the maximum sentence in this case was too merciful.

The 1992 legislature, while closing a legal loophole that had allowed many abusers of incapacitated adults to go scot-free, balked at making such offenses a felony, as was recommended by a disabilities commission headed by Lt. Gov. Don Beyer. Instead, legislators made it a Class 1 misdemeanor.

This clearly has given authorities means they didn't have before to step in and stop horrible treatment of pitifully helpless adults before it leads to death. (Unfortunately, the means don't guarantee that end. In another shocking case, an 83-year-old Bedford woman died last August allegedly as the result of extreme abuse and neglect by her 61-year-old daughter. The daughter had signed her mother out of a nursing home, against doctors' wishes, because she said she needed her mother's Social Security benefits to help pay bills.)

Now the 1994 legislature is being asked by Beyer and others to upgrade to a Class 6 felony the law that applies to willful abuse and neglect of vulnerable adults. It should do so. This would give judges and juries the discretion to sentence up to five years those convicted in the most blatant cases. This would also put the penalty more in line with child-abuse cases, where the guilty can be imprisoned for up to 10 years.

Many adults, it should be kept in mind, are as vulnerable - and at much at risk of willful bad treatment by their care-takers - as the tiniest children.

It is fortunate that most nursing homes, their employees and others who care for the old and ill or mentally feeble are conscientious and kind in their tasks. In any case, the General Assembly cannot - by passing a bill - prevent all the cruelties that human beings inflict on the weak and the helpless.

Legislators can, however, strengthen the laws and strengthen the message: Such atrocious mistreatment won't be tolerated.

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994

by CNB