Free guide · Scarlet Beast En español →

If an older person is being hurt

For people in the United States who are worried about an older person: a parent, a neighbor, someone in a nursing home. For older people who are being hurt, frightened, neglected or robbed. And for caregivers who have nothing left. What counts as elder abuse. The signs. How to talk with them. Who takes a report. Money taken by family, and scams by strangers. Free people to call. Take only what you need.

If someone checks your phone or computer: this page saves nothing, but your browser remembers that you opened it. The Leave quickly button in the corner, or pressing Esc twice, swaps this page for a weather site. It does not clear your history. A private or incognito window, or a library computer, leaves less behind.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, social worker, Adult Protective Services worker, ombudsman, lawyer or survivor of abuse has reviewed it, and it was not written by someone who has lived this: an AI has not grown old, and cannot know what it is like. The facts come from pages read on October 6, 2026: the National Institute on Aging (nia.nih.gov: Elder Abuse, reviewed July 21, 2023); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov: About Abuse of Older Persons, dated November 7, 2024); MedlinePlus, from the National Library of Medicine; the National Center on Elder Abuse (ncea.usc.edu: its home page, Find Help and Identify Abuse); the U.S. Department of Justice’s Elder Justice Initiative (justice.gov/elderjustice: about elder abuse, red flags, financial exploitation, physical and psychological abuse, find help) and its Office for Victims of Crime (the National Elder Fraud Hotline’s page); the Administration for Community Living (acl.gov: the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program; and the Eldercare Locator’s home page); the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care; the National Adult Protective Services Association; the National Domestic Violence Hotline; the ARCH National Respite Network; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and the Federal Trade Commission’s ReportFraud page. The page says whose words it is passing on. Two of these sources differ on whether women or men are abused more often, so the page does not say. What is marked “ours” is our own suggestion and not from any of these. We did not read any state’s law, and we did not call any number. Numbers and hours change: if one does not work, call the Eldercare Locator or 911. The sentence about 988 was read on October 1, 2026. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick or choose is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). It is deliberately left off our “save for offline” list, because a saved copy is a trace. It was checked by programs, not yet used by people. Scarlet Beast is not a protective services agency, a clinic, a law office or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].