{"id":10006,"date":"2024-05-29T07:06:23","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T19:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=10006"},"modified":"2024-05-29T07:06:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T19:06:23","slug":"migrant-elderly-parents-tell-of-abuse-by-nz-children-as-study-finds-elder-abuse-rampant-among-indian-and-chinese-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=10006","title":{"rendered":"Migrant elderly parents tell of abuse by NZ children as study finds elder abuse rampant among Indian and Chinese communities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some\u00a0elderly migrants<\/a>\u00a0who follow their children to New Zealand are being abandoned by their loved ones, financially fleeced by their offspring and even physically assaulted by their family.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to a charity working to support senior citizens in\u00a0South Asian communities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it comes as new research finds elder abuse to be rampant among Asian communities, with about half of older Indians and a third from the Chinese community aged 65 and over claiming they are victims.<\/p>\n

Jeet Suchdev, chairman of Bhartiya Samaj, said there are heartbreaking stories about seniors in the Indian community enduring alleged\u00a0elder abuse<\/a>\u00a0– often by their loved ones.<\/p>\n

Bhartiya Samaj, a charitable trust which Suchdev started in 1995, has been referred \u201cdozens of cases\u201d over the past few years \u2013 attending to at least two cases a month.<\/p>\n

Suchdev said one couple he worked with\u00a0moved to New Zealand<\/a>\u00a0from India to help raise their grandchildren.<\/p>\n

Speaking very little English and in their 80s, the couple had trusted their daughter and her husband with their finances. After returning home from a hospital stay, they discovered their bank accounts had been drained, he said. Never in their wildest imagination did they ever think their daughter, \u201ctheir own flesh and blood\u201d, would \u201crob them\u201d of all their money, Suchdev said.Another woman Suchdev worked with, a housewife in her 70s from India, was invited to move to New Zealand by her son after her husband passed away.<\/p>\n

But when her son\u2019s business failed, he kicked her out of the family home and \u201cabandoned her\u201d on the street, Suchdev said.<\/p>\n

In other instances, family members have physically abused their elderly relatives but Suchdev said that almost always the victims did not want to get the police involved or file any official complaint.<\/p>\n

\u201cElder abuse is an epidemic that is widespread and rampant, but so hidden that the real level of abuse may never be known,\u201d Suchdev said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey come from cultures that are not used to making complaints and won\u2019t make a report because they feel it is a loss of face.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery often, we have difficulty of even convincing these victims that they are, in fact, victims of elder abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suchdev, who has been working as a community social worker for more than 20 years, said it was important to let people in migrant communities know that any sort of elder abuse was not okay, even if a family member committed it.<\/p>\n

Te Tari Kaum\u0101tua, the Office for Seniors, estimates one in 10 older people in New Zealand are victims of elder abuse, but most abuse isn\u2019t recognised or ignored.<\/p>\n

A new study, Belonging as an Ageing Asian, by Emeritus Professor of Diversity Edwina Pio from AUT University also found the issue remains hidden due to a reluctance to complain.<\/p>\n

About 96 per cent of cases went unreported as victims were reluctant to speak out.<\/p>\n

Pio interviewed 18 high-level managers who worked with older people in Auckland, and conducted three focus groups comprising a total of 38 from the Chinese, Indian and South Korean communities aged 65 or older for her report.<\/p>\n

The three ethnic groups have the largest communities of older Asians in Auckland, with the Chinese numbering 16,836, Indians 9345, and South Koreans 1434.<\/p>\n

SOURCE NZ HERALD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some\u00a0elderly migrants\u00a0who follow their children to New Zealand are being abandoned by their loved ones, financially fleeced by their offspring and even physically assaulted by their family. That\u2019s according to a charity working to support senior citizens in\u00a0South Asian communities. And it comes as new research finds elder abuse to be rampant among Asian communities, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10008,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006\/revisions\/10008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}