NEWMARKET -- Lawmakers should be alert to abuse of seniors rising as babyboomers age, a prosecutor warned before a woman was jailed for letting her common-law husband starve and be beaten by her brutal lover.
"In their declining years, when individuals are less and less capable of protecting themselves, we in the justice system must ensure their protection," Crown attorney Michael Demczur told a court yesterday.
"Elder abuse is one of the growth areas of policing and prosecutions, and will be as our population ages," he said. "We must at the outset send a strong and clear message that abuse of the old will meet with severe punishment."
Demczur said private medical staff who saw Thomas Butler, 69, at his Richmond Hill flat twice daily failed to alert authorities to his many bruises and skin-and-bones decline to 68 pounds.
'BETRAYED'
Yasmin Madi pleaded guilty to failing to provide the necessities of life and her drug-addicted boyfriend, Ghassem "Gus" Shakeri, pleaded guilty to assault.
"Not only was Mr. Butler failed by Ms. Madi, he was also betrayed by those that the government paid to take care of him," Demczur told Judge Peter Bourque.
The prosecutor, who called Butler "as dependent on the care and protection of others as any newborn," told court that Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) assessed the stroke victim before ordering twice-daily professional home treatment.
Employees of S.R.T. Med-Staff, a Toronto-based at-home seniors care specialist firm, were interviewed by police after Butler's children found him battered and skeletal, but said "they did not see anything that concerned them.
"They claimed that they sponge-bathed Mr. Butler almost daily," Demczur said, questioning how "bruises of various vintages all over Mr. Butler's body," three broken fingers, and "his emaciated frame" could not sound an alarm.
