Marshall wanted his grandmother, famed socialite Brooke Astor, to enjoy her final years at her country home, as she had wished. When his father, Anthony Marshall, wouldn’t let her, Philip sought guardianship, setting off a legal battle. As the fight progressed, Philip says he discovered that his grandmother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, was enduring various forms of neglect. It was “all in an effort by my father to gain her money,” he alleges.
The dispute culminated in his father’s conviction and prison sentence in 2009 for siphoning off millions of dollars from Astor. At first, says Philip, “Our goal was just to stop my grandmother’s isolation and manipulation. We didn’t really care about money.” A separate legal proceeding over the neglect allegations was eventually resolved. Last year, Philip quit his job as a professor to become a full-time advocate in the fight against elder abuse. He gives talks to government officials and financial institutions and spends hours speaking with strangers dealing with exploitation. “So many times, it’s family,” he says. “I don’t think people realize that.”
On a rainy April afternoon at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Justice, the shelter Reingold helped start in the Bronx, there are countless versions of Astor’s story unfolding daily, albeit for smaller sums. More than 70 percent of the center’s clients are victims of financial abuse, with most also suffering from emotional and physical abuse as well.
“It’s often a slow and steady and unrelenting experience,” says Joy Solomon, a former New York prosecutor and director of the center. She says her team is seeing an increase in seniors showing up in housing court—because they’re being evicted. “A lot have been financially exploited and they don’t even know what’s happening until they get that notice.” Losing housing usually accelerates mental and physical decline, she says.Unless we figure out how to protect the assets of senior citizens from this epidemic, Solomon says, “we’re going to come to a place where we’re seeing a lot of homeless elderly people on the street.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.