This sounds vaugely familiar…

Minister for Senior Citizens Ruth Dyson has condemned New Zealand society for allowing elder sex abuse and other harm of the elderly to flourish nationwide.

Ms Dyson was speaking following reports in Wairarapa and across the country of sons committing forced incest with their elderly mothers.

“There is stigma for the elderly women who are victims but nobody should accept being raped. ”

Grey Power national president Graham Stairmand said he was aware of elder sexual abuse through anecdotal and “occasional information”.

The original Wairarapa Times-Age story Sexual abuse by family members, says:

Elder abuse, including sexual abuse, is an evil and growing trend.

Sons committing incest with their elderly mothers in Wairarapa are part of a silent and increasing pattern of elder abuse across New Zealand, says Heather Evans, regional elder abuse and neglect prevention co-ordinator.

Ms Evans has worked as a social worker out of Turret House Social Services in Featherston for 14 years and first became aware of the incestuous abuse of an elderly Wairarapa woman about two years ago.

Last year Ms Evans became involved with two other similar cases in the region where dependent and vulnerable women were living with their sons in a “miserable and horrifying marriage of inconvenience”.

In each case the husbands had died sometime earlier, she said.

“The men are all in their late forties, all white, and all struggling to find work. Two have never married and one has divorced and returned to the family home.

Besides one of the men, known to mental health, and one woman “on the fringes of dementia” the other sons and their mothers seemed of sound mind and intellect, she said.

One of the women was almost 80 years of age and the other two are older again, she said.

“If I know of three cases, how many are out there going completely unreported. There’s a definite increasing pattern emerging here in Wairarapa and across the country,” she said.

I know! lets employ a whole lot of young would-be counsellors to look for old ladies and help them remember being raped by their sons. Perhaps the government should offer generous compensation.

This sounds like it could be the tip of the iceberg!

None of the cases have been reported to police, Ms Evans said, as each of the women refused to pursue prosecution for fear of their sons being jailed.