Rhode Island women in their 50s are more likely than older females to be abused by spouses or other intimate partners. Women over 60 are most often victimized by their grown children and grandchildren.

In a groundbreaking study of domestic abuse of older women, researchers have found that while Rhode Island police investigate hundreds of cases of domestic abuse reported each year, many of them never go through the court system and those who are prosecuted rarely get sentenced to prison.

Researchers discovered “a major divide” between the police and social workers who investigate elder abuse cases for the state. “Few cases referred to the state’s Department of Elderly Affairs were referred to police for criminal investigation and few cases involving eligible victims brought to police were referred to the DEA for services,” the study concluded.

A four-member team reviewed all reports to police of domestic abuse made by women age 50 or older during the year 2002. They interviewed the police, DEA social workers and others who provide help for abused women.

The research, paid for by the U.S. Department of Justice, was the first –– and the largest –– statewide study ever done in the country that focused solely on domestic abuse of older women, as reported to the police. Andrew Klein, a former Massachusetts probation officer who was the lead investigator for the study, said he was surprised by the findings.

When the researchers began, they assumed that most abuse of older women was perpetrated by relatives who were “over-stressed caregivers” and that a small percentage of victims would actually report their abuse to the police.

Prior national studies have concluded that older women usually don’t report domestic abuse and that the police are loath to bring charges against a relative except in cases where there is serious physical injury. Past surveys have also shown that less than 25 percent of older women who report abuse are subjected to repeat abuse.

But researchers found the opposite.

In 2002, 408 Rhode Island women age 50 or older filed complaints reporting domestic abuse. And in 65 percent of the cases, it was the victim who reported the abuse. Victims who filed reports against spouses claimed that on average, the abuse had been going on for five years.

They also discovered that most of the abuse reported by the older women did not involve caregivers but repeat offenders, many with criminal records. Many of the grown children and grandchildren accused in the complaints had drug, alcohol and mental health-problems and were “predatory” as well as “needy.” Their goal was to secure money from their parents, “often in conflict with other siblings.”

Rhode Island police departments were very aggressive in responding to complaints. Police records showed that within 24 hours of receiving a report, the police brought charges against 68 percent of the suspects of elder abuse (where the victim was 60 or older) and against almost 61 percent of the suspects accused of abusing women victims who were between 50 and 59.

THE STUDY, posted on the Internet on the National Criminal Justice Reference Service’s Website — www.ncjrs.gov — has broad policy implications. National studies show that two out of three elder abuse victims in the United States are women and that almost 90 percent of elder abuse is domestic. In Rhode Island, women make up almost 60 percent of the over-65 population and their rate of divorce is lower than the national average.

Klein said what surprised him the most “was how quickly the relationship between victim and abuser changes once a woman reaches age 60. It’s very dramatic. … The abuse isn’t so much intimate partner abuse as it is other family member abuse, mostly adult sons and grandsons.”

But still, his research found that “one-third of domestic elder abuse is still committed mostly by husbands which flies in the face of the message the Bush administration and these faith-based groups have been putting out for the last eight years –– that marriage is the safest place for a woman to be.

“If you’re married and abused, marriage is the most unsafe place to be because the abuse just continues,” he said. “Most of these abusers are antisocial and have criminal records outside the family. As they get older, their criminality becomes focused just on the spouse.”

Another unexpected finding, he said, was the number of older women in Rhode Island who report domestic abuse to the police. In Rhode Island, women who are 60 or older were “10 times as likely to report their abuse to law enforcement” as elderly women nationwide who report abuse to hotlines run by social-service agencies.

Klein said he does not believe that there is more domestic abuse in Rhode Island than elsewhere in the country. “In fact, domestic violence rates are lower in the Northeast than elsewhere in the country, especially as compared to the South and the West.” Instead, he said, “I think it’s a sign that Rhode Island police are among the most proficient in the country, that the high reporting rates shows that there is public confidence in the police and that they are either very receptive to this type of crime or well-trained in responding to it.”

The study helps to debunk myths. It found that when police did respond to an abuse call from an older woman, they often did not find physical injury. In examining police and court records, the researchers discovered that most abuse of older women in Rhode Island is not physical and does not require medical attention.

Grown children stole parents’ cars, appliances, clothing as well as money. The reason the abused mother called the police was not to get the son or daughter in trouble but to use the criminal justice system to force a mentally unstable or addicted child get the help they need, said Klein.

“The elder doesn’t want the child prosecuted but wants the police to help get them into treatment,” said Klein. A pattern developed as the researchers combed through the records: Grown children who abused their mothers weren’t one-time offenders but had long criminal histories, including records for assault

Klein said the prosecution rate for these cases is probably a bit higher in Rhode Island than nationally.

“The one thing that was surprising,” he said, “is that Rhode Island has made assaults on people over 60 a felony but when you look at the prosecution of these cases, you don’t see any greater percentage of people being sanctioned or incarcerated for their crimes.”

“The intent of the law is not being realized in the courts. An abuser is not more likely to go to jail if the victim was older than 60 than if the victim was younger.” Klein said he doesn’t know whether this is because many victims are “unwilling or unable to testify or because prosecutors don’t want to have to deal with these cases or perhaps it’s because judges don’t take these crimes seriously.”

In their report, the researchers were critical of the way judges dealt with the offenders. “Particularly for elderly victims,” they said, “the effectiveness of prosecution may have been compromised by tepid sentencing patterns and the imposition of misdemeanor dispositions for felony charges.”

Klein said that the way Rhode Island law addresses those convicted of domestic violence needs to be amended. Now, anyone convicted of an offense of this nature is required to complete a batterers’ intervention program. But the researchers said that “a far more appropriate requirement” would be to sentence offenders to mandatory substance-abuse and mental-health counseling and to make them submit to abstinence testing.

The researchers zeroed in on one case they studied in which prosecutors reduced a felony offense to a misdemeanor and agreed to a suspended sentence for a suspect who had been charged six times previously with domestic violence-related charges and who had served prison time for violating probation. The judge ordered the man to participate in a batterer’s program –– for the fifth time. Elder abuse in Rhode Island

A newly published study provides a good picture of domestic abuse of older women in Rhode Island.

Rhode Island was chosen as a focus for the research because state law requires police to file every domestic violence report they investigate with a central repository, the Supreme Court’s Domestic Violence Training and Monitoring Unit. Also, Rhode Island has one of the highest domestic-violence reporting rates in the country.

Researchers reviewed police reports, how the police responded to them and how the courts punished the perpetrators.

Here are their findings:

•Most of the older women who file domestic-abuse reports with the police in Rhode Island are 50 to 59 years old.

•A little over half of the reported abuse on women over 50 was committed by current or former spouses, live-in partners or former partners; about 46 percent involved other family members, most often grown sons.

•Almost half of alleged abusers had prior criminal records in Rhode Island, nearly one-third of them records for domestic violence.

•Women who are 60 or older were more likely to be victimized by grown children and grandchildren than by spouses, boyfriends or former intimate partners.

•Older women who remain married to their abusers are at a higher risk of continued abuse than those who separate or divorce.

•Reporting abuse did not act as a deterrent. More than 22 percent of the older women who reported domestic abuse in 2002 were subjected to repeat abuse; one-third of them were revictimized two to five times between 2002-2004, most within the same year as the original incident. Most of the new incidents involved the same subject.

•Women who had gotten restraining orders against their abusers were much more likely to be subjected to recurrent abuse than those who had not.

•Most abuse of older women is not physical or sexual assault and does not require emergency medical attention; 44 percent of the reported abuse involved physical or sexual assaults and 9 percent involved weapons. More than half of the complaints involved threats of bodily injury or incidents of property damage or stolen property.

•Only 10 percent of the reported offenses were charged by the police as felonies.

•Prosecutors dismissed charges against nearly one-third of the defendants charged by the police with crimes involving domestic abuse of women over 50; less than 10 percent served any prison time.

•There is little collaboration between the police and the Department of Elderly Affairs, the state agency that provides social services for victims of abuse and neglect. During 2002, the DEA referred just three domestic abuse cases that it received to the police and the police got the DEA involved in just 35 cases.

—Tracy Breton

tbreton@projo.com