Elder Abuse in My Broken Family

My father married his wife, Naomi, 41 years ago. She had a daughter, Lori from a previous marriage, and he had 5 children with my mom. Naomi liked to tell me, “I already have a daughter, I don’t need another one.” Now she is dying, and trying to get as much money out of my dad as possible, which she is giving to her daughter Lori. At 54 Lori is supported by my dad, which her mother demands. In fact she tells my dad “You owe me.” And after 41 years of abuse, he does whatever she says, even though supporting her lazy daughter tortures him. They even found a lawyer who agreed with Naomi and had my dad agree to give her money for what he “owes” Naomi. For her daughter Lori, he pays for her credit card, including her trips around the world, plus she loves eating out, and she gets a monthly check for her living expenses. We estimate my father pays her around $10K a month, sometimes more. Her mother had no money, and only worked part-time, but my dad did alright and now, my brothers and I are not sure he has enough money to support himself when Naomi dies.

At age 86, my dad is completely controlled by his wife. Even from her hospital bed she’s making demands that he will fulfill, foregoing his own children, and anyone who gets in his way to keep her “happy.” You are probably wondering, did we call Adult Protective Services? Yes. He doesn’t want help. You can’t help a person who doesn’t want help. The police came out to their house twice because Naomi attacked him and he refused to fight her. Another time, a complete stranger driving on the Highway 101 saw Naomi attack my father while he was driving. Naomi even grabbed the steering wheel and tried to drive them into traffic.  She wants him to die, so she can get his money – her words not mine. The kind stranger who witnessed this followed them home and called the police so that this poor man could get help.  My dad didn’t want to press charges, and didn’t want any help. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want help, no matter how much help that person really needs.

I have worried about my dad to the point of being ill, but my tears do not move him. He doesn’t care about anything but her. Early on she did all the things abusers do: separated him from his family, insulted him, while she and her daughter laughed at him. At some point, the person being abused gives up and believes this is the best they can have. She controls him completely. It hurts knowing my 86 year old father is being abused. For example, she tells him he “pays rent” he doesn’t contribute to the mortgage. She wants the house they shared together to go to her daughter, Lori. Lori lives in Santa Monica, and has a lot to gain when her mother dies.  In my opinion, her daughter, Lori is taking part in elder abuse of my father. And the puppet master is her mother, Naomi, who is now in the hospital, but still controls and abuses my father. She’s diabetic and demands that he bring her “sandwiches” aka, hamburgers and any other junk she wants to eat. The nurses tell him not to, but he only listens to her.

It’s hard for me to accept. Families are supposed to care about each other. Naomi and Lori are not a family. They never showed him unconditional love, but he doesn’t seem to know that.  They are both shallow, and greedy.  My brothers and I can’t do anything. But I can write about it now. I tried before but it was too raw – too sad. But now I realize I can’t do anything. We try to support him, but everything is a secret. This is another tactic of abusers – never divulge the truth. Although my dad has given Naomi hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last few years that she’s been sick, we don’t know what she has taken without his knowledge. As for our family, I feel Naomi has destroyed it, out of greed and power, and her food addiction. In my opinion her daughter is a co-conspirator who is only concerned with maintaing her lavish lifestyle. They are the only other people allowed to talk to doctors, so no one caring for Naomi and my dad have any awareness of how abusive she is to my dad, and Lori has too much invested to care. I only wished it ended there. I will write more about that at another time. Right now, our family can only wait and prepare to help our dad when the time comes. We hope we can help our dad get his life back and enjoy his final days. If our family wasn't broken, we would have never allowed this to happen, but we were never part of "the family"; Naomi made sure of that. I think there are other broken families out there experiencing similar issues.