RADAR ALERT:
Why Does AARP Have No Compassion for Elderly Abused Men?

The article And Then He Hit Me (http://www.aarpmagazine.org/family/domestic_violence.html) minimizes elder male domestic violence victimization. It was published in the January/February 2006 issue of the AARP Magazine. The author, David France, claims that the numbers of woman-on-man incidents of domestic violence are, in his words, “negligible”. He also notes that data from a 1988 study of elder abuse in Boston suggests that the extrapolated number of elders abused could be a million a year.

This is yet another egregious example of a nationally published article by authors and publishers who have little to no real understanding of domestic violence. What the authors of that Boston study actually document is that 43% of the physical violence cases were of the wife assaulting the husband, whereas only 17% were of the husband assaulting the wife (Pillemer, K. and D. Finkelor. (1988) The Prevalence of Elder Abuse: A Random Sample Survey. Gerontologist, Vol. 28, No. 1, 51-57).

This clearly documents that the author and the publisher of the AARP magazine, similar to the majority of members of the media, mislead their readers, and mislead policymakers as well, by printing untruths about domestic violence as if they were the truth.

Please contact the publisher of AARP magazine, and tell him:

1. By misrepresenting the number of woman-on-man incidents of domestic violence as “negligible”, they have put a great number of elderly at risk -- many of them AARP magazine's very own readers!
2. A first step in rectifying the harm AARP has done would be for them to publish an unbiased article that emphasizes the plight of elder male domestic violence victims who, because they're male, find that virtually no services are available to them.

Here's the contact info:

Date of RADAR Release: February 26, 2006

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R.A.D.A.R. – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting – is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of men and women working to improve the effectiveness of our nation's approach to solving domestic violence. http://www.mediaradar.org