I was courted online over a period of 3 years and then the person came to my home. I have been financially exploited, harassed, stalked and emotionally traumatized by it all. I am a senior on the autism spectrum, with epilepsy, who is a lesbian. Towards the end I feared for my own life.

I was living at home and a woman I had been communicating with over 3 years was having difficulties and I offered for her to stay at my home for a couple months, when I planned to travel. The day after she arrived she asked me to legally adopt her. She is a middle aged woman and I said “No”. She then persuaded me to have her be property manager for renters at my home and in my Assessory dwelling Unit. She was very loud and persuasive. She requested to use my computer for a security system and soon had gone onto my amazon account. I got notification next of someone trying to use of my Lowe’s credit card. She cashed in items I had bought for over $350 at Target. She asked for borrowing money. First it was small sums then larger. It came out to over $15,000. When I got home and saw my bank statements I saw that it went to Redwood Sustainability, not to Ro Pereira, who had requested it via PayPal. Then she wrote that I had gifted her the money, as a tax write off. WRONG. Redwood Sustainability I did not authorize. Then she wrote an invoice for over $10,000 for one month of ‘work’ when she had been sick most of the time and staying in my personal studio. I no longer had free access to my own belongings. She talked me into giving notice to my housemate tenants. They were afraid of her and left in a few days. She was domineering and doing set ups to get me to believe my tenants were doing bad things to my home and writing harsh emails to them. I got scared and felt trapped. Then I fired her and told her she must leave by the end of the month. She said she would stay until September 1, per the contract, that I couldn’t make her leave. After my request for her to leave she sent me email sex messages and had someone stalk me and through stones at me in the park. I can’t prove it, but I know she did because she talked about it. She brought it up. I began to fear for my personal safety. I tried to get help from the police. They were no help. They told me I needed to give her notice to vote, which could take months. I finally realized I needed to get a protection order. There is no one here in bellingham washington to help with a protection order for domestic violence unless one has had sex with the perpetrator. I needed to spend thousands of dollars to hire an attorney to proceed in court for a one year protection order. The police had not served the protection order correctly and later told me that being a ‘vulnerable adult’ put it at low priority. The officer called the respondent and notified her and then came to my home 6-8 hours later. Of course she was gone by then and had not been served the protection order. There are NO resources for elder or vulnerable adult financial exploitation or abuse in Bellingham, WA. Adult Protective Services, did nothing to help me with a protection order. Domestic Violence Sexual Assault Center, would not help me, since I did not have sex with this woman who lived in my home. There are NO public resources in this city to protect seniors or disabled from domestic violence from a person living in their home, whom they do not have a sexual relationship with, even if that person was ‘courting’ them.

That there may be state laws to protect, but in reality there is a lack of priority, interest in or public funding to protect elders. Why does the Domestic Violence center exclude victims of domestic violence perpetrators, unless they had sexual intercourse with them?!
We are vulnerable due not only to aging and disabilities, but also because we may have retirement funds, to live on for the remainder of our lives, which is very tempting and easy access, with little or no repercussions for perpetrators breaking the law.

I would like to see that every domestic violence center will provide services to victims of domestic violence, financial exploitation within the home, to include who do not have an intimate relationship with the perpetrator. I would like to have adult protective services help us. I would like to have senior centers have a volunteer who would show us what to do and how to get help. The senior center coud have someone who arranges with the domestic violence center. A volunteer could go with the senior to court. The police need to put domestic violence of a vulnerable adult as high priority. The senior center needs to have a place for the elders to go to be safe during the serving of the protection order and then arrange a plan with them to be safe at home. Someone needs to go through things with the senior and find out if there has been identity theft and help the senior report it online and to the police. There needs to be counseling and support services for the aftermath and ptsd recovery.

The police need to investigate and prosecute elder abuse and financial exploitation. They need to recognize that it’s not just the money but its human lives. Research demonstrates that elder financial exploitation correlates with shortening one’s life by a significant number of years. FTC needs to bridge the gap between states. In my case this woman has been financially exploiting in California for years. Now up here on Washington. Who knows what other states? She claims to be poor, but on reality she changes names, uses supposedly real non-profits to claim tax deduction, and is on the move.