Abuse of senior citizens DOUBLES in one Australian city during the coronavirus pandemic
BY BRINKWIRE ON AUGUST 30, 2020

Abuse of senior citizens on the Gold Coast has almost doubled over the course of the coronavirus pandemic.

Legal experts issued a warning that desperate Australians had resorted to scamming and even assaulting some of the most vulnerable people in society as the pandemic puts unprecedented pressure on the nation’s finances.

Senior solicitor Ian Martin, from the Gold Coast Community Legal Centre, said he’d seen a major increase in the number of elderly people seeking aid.

‘The amount of questions I’ve had over wills, estates and powers of attorney from May until August, compared to the same period in 2019, I’m looking at a 110 per cent increase,’ Mr Martin told Gold Coast Bulletin.

The solicitor said he also faced a confronting 250 per cent jump in advice related to abuse and improper financial conduct.

‘A lot of elder abuse is going to have a domestic violence component because, quite sadly, it’s the daughters or the sons that are causing the abuse,’ he explained.

Mr Martin said the ‘huge jump’ could be attributed to a staggering number of adult children moving back home and causing physical and financial stress.

‘For the most part it’s financial abuse and neglect, where you have a number of what you might call privileged children thinking ‘mum or dad just need to be put in a home somewhere and we’ll just move into the house’, he explained.

Mr Martin added that some of his clients had also suffered after lending their children money without a formal legal contract.

He said children taking financial advantage and isolating their elderly relatives was common and had become easier during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Elderly citizens were already particularly vulnerable, as they are more socially disconnected, and this was exploited by opportunistic relatives during isolation.

Mr Martin said most elderly clients declined to pursue legal action against their children despite undergoing ‘appalling’ and ‘distressing’ psychological abuse.

Head of the Gold Coast family violence unit, Detective Inspector Paul Dalton, said criminal complaints had not increased but felt the issue deserved more attention.



He agreed that the coronavirus pandemic had made elderly Australians even more vulnerable and forced them into further isolation.



Inspector Dalton urged members of the community check on their elderly neighbours or friends and to speak up if something was wrong.