RADAR Alert: Why Does AARP Have No Compassion for Elderly Abused Men?

The article And Then He Hit Me
minimizes elder male domestic violence victimization. It was published
in the January/February 2006 issue of the AARP Magazine. The
author, David France, claims that the numbers of woman-on-man incidents of domestic violence are, in his words, “negligible”.
He also notes that data from a 1988 study of elder abuse in Boston
suggests that the extrapolated number of elders abused could be a
million a year.

Click "Read more..." for more.

This is yet another egregious example of a nationally published
article by authors and publishers who have little to no real
understanding of domestic violence. What the authors of that Boston
study actually document is that 43% of the physical violence cases
were of the wife assaulting the husband,
whereas only 17% were of the husband assaulting the wife [Pillemer, K.
and D. Finkelor. (1988) The Prevalence of Elder Abuse: A Random Sample
Survey. Gerontologist, Vol. 28, No. 1, 51-57].

This clearly documents that the author and the publisher of the AARP magazine,
similar to the majority of members of the media, mislead their readers, and mislead policymakers as well, by printing untruths about domestic violence as if they were the truth.

Please contact the publisher of AARP magazine, and tell
him:

1. By misrepresenting the number of woman-on-man incidents of
   domestic violence as “negligible”, they have put a great number of
   elderly at risk -- many of them AARP magazine's very own
   readers!
2. A first step in rectifying the harm AARP has done would be for
   them to
   publish an unbiased article that emphasizes the plight of elder male
   domestic violence victims who, because they're male, find that
   virtually no services are available to them.

Here's the contact info:

Date of RADAR Release: February 26, 2006

R.A.D.A.R. – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic
Abuse Reporting – is a network of concerned
men and women working to assure that the problem of
domestic violence is treated in a balanced and
effective manner. http://www.mediaradar.org/.

NOTICE: This story was migrated from the old software that used to run Mensactivism.org. Unfortunately, user comments did not get included in the migration. However, you may view a copy of the original story, with comments, at the following link:

http://news.mensactivism.org/articles/06/02/26/230213.shtml