Editorial: New law is past due to protect vulnerable elderly

The highest duty of law is to protect the vulnerable.

Perhaps the most important aspect of that is safeguarding those people from the individuals meant to do the protecting.

Pennsylvania is living up to that responsibility with a new law signed by Gov. Tom Wolf this week.

State Rep. Carrie Lewis DelRosso, R-Oakmont, sponsored the legislation, which codifies a particular degree of criminal activity. For the first time, people who sexually abuse those they care for — such as the elderly, sick or disabled — will be treated like others who abuse their authority in official situations with students, small children or inmates.

It isn’t that people before couldn’t be charged for sex crimes against those in their care. It’s that it wasn’t specifically spelled out that there were the same consequences for caregivers for committing such offenses against a grandmother or a next door neighbor that there was for a daycare worker or corrections officer.

“During the pandemic and while knocking on doors, I recognized that these vulnerable populations, who are economically disadvantaged, didn’t have a voice,” DelRosso said.

They may have voices, but often the only people who hear them could be the same people who abuse them.

The National Council on Aging puts the number of seniors abused every year at 1 in 10. While we often think of that abuse in terms of neglect or financial scams, isolation and dementia also can make them prime targets for sexual abuse.

The new law is important because the cost of care has made long-term facilities an out-of-reach option for many families. More people are turning to home health care or hospice as options, putting vulnerable elderly and ill people in the care of people who have little oversight.

There are staffing challenges that predate the pandemic that also could allow abuse by stretching employees thin and providing abusers with more opportunities to prey on those who can’t defend themselves.

Pennsylvania has made great strides in the 10 years since the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case brought a spotlight to the blind spots in the protection of kids. It stepped up more as the Catholic church sex abuses were uncovered.

But it is past time more attention is paid to the elderly and others who are in just as dangerous and dependent a position as our children. The law has caught up with the reality of this abuse. Now, enforcement has to take over.