My father, brother, and I were close. Our father was our hero, and we never imagined he would be taken advantage of. Not in a million years.
My father married Marie 6 months after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. It appeared that their partnership was equal, but no one in my family or hers knew of his diagnosis. My father made his long-term directives 2 months after they married. He named me as his power of attorney, and health care advocate, and my brother was his alternate. Their finances were separate. They had separate bank accounts and retirement accounts. Nothing they owned was joint.
Marie’s pattern of control gradually intensified as my father’s decline progressed. It wasn’t difficult to influence my father. Alzheimer’s had gradually eroded his keen judgment and every clear boundary he had set for himself. I didn’t understand what coercion was, and I never heard of coercive control until I began studying my father, his disease, and his relationship with Marie. The signs were subtle.
“In coercive control, the abuser seeks to isolate the victim. The pattern of behavior or actions used by a perpetrator is used to frighten, threaten, oppress, and limit their victim. A perpetrator will work to isolate and intimidate their partner to the point where their partner’s isolation from others and dependence on them gives them an immense feeling of power and control.”
Marie monitored my father’s phone calls with me. She was always in the background on speaker, filling in the gaps when he forgot a word or his train of thought. And never left my father’s side when I visited.
One afternoon, while watching TV with them, a commercial about receiving a check came on. It seemed to jog my father’s memory. My father asked, “Marie, didn’t we just get a check?”
She hesitated. Then said, “No.”
Alzheimer’s gave Marie leverage. As my father became more impaired, Marie grew more emboldened. In a twisted form of gaslighting, Marie turned my father’s lucid moment into a memory that never happened. I didn’t know who to believe. One morning, she left with my father, took out the trash, and put a fresh bag in the basket. I went to throw away something when I saw a piece of paper on top. I picked it up. The note was made out to Marie by the postwoman, Linda. She wrote, “I will continue to hold Jack’s mail.” Marie kept my father’s mail from me, on purpose.
I discovered after my father’s death that my father’s out-of-the-blue statement to Marie, “Didn’t we just get a check?” wasn’t a figment of his imagination. His moment of clarity was a window of truth. He had been receiving, signing, and cashing many Vanguard checks.
The note in the trash from the postwoman, addressed to Marie, “I will continue to hold Jack’s mail,” confirmed that Marie didn’t want me to see the IRA check expected to arrive at his home while I was staying with him during the month. There was no record of where the cash went.
Our attorney didn’t believe me when I expressed my suspicions of abuse while he was living alone with Marie. This leads me to believe that other family members aren’t always taken seriously when they express their suspicions against another family member. The fact is, coercion, intimidation, and threats against a person with Alzheimer’s are difficult to detect and harder to prove.
A person who intentionally instills fear to threaten and control another person’s actions and what they say is committing abuse. Emotional torment and isolation leave no trail when there are no witnesses or evidence. These crimes become invisible, and prosecuting the abuser is nearly impossible when the victim can’t remember or is too afraid to speak out. The first step in preventing abuse is to spot it. I discovered there are distinct types of abuse. One being isolation.
Marie physically separated my father from my brother and me. She enraged him and tried to make him break off his relationship with us. Then Marie tried to keep him in Florida at the end of his life. She manipulated a rift in his friendship with Murray and blamed it on my father. Marie stopped taking my father to the social events they both once frequented at the clubhouse in their Florida condo community. She monitored every call he made. I believe she did it because she feared the unpredictable lucid moments.

There is no good reason and no benefit to keeping an Alzheimer’s
diagnosis a secret. Even the shortest duration of time can create an opportunity for abuse, coercion, and exploitation.
I learned important lessons.
I know I could have had a better chance at deterring abuse
1. If my father had disclosed the Alzheimer’s diagnosis to my brother and me within days.
2. If I had contacted a social worker to help my father begin the process of decision-making.

Having a social worker from the onset of diagnosis to mediate advocates, family, and loved ones can help the person with Alzheimer’s in four ways.
1. Evaluation. An Alzheimer’s diagnosis comes with many decisions to make. An experienced social worker can help advocates, family, and loved ones, look at and discuss all possible solutions, not just one.
2. Communication through mediation. The structure of mediation gives the person with Alzheimer’s, advocates, family members, and loved ones a supportive environment where all can speak and be heard. The power of persuasion is neutralized.
Decisions by the person with Alzheimer’s can be made without feeling cornered or pressured by one person’s beliefs and opinions on what they should do. These meetings support everyone.
3. Documentation through routine mediation protects the decisions of a person with Alzheimer’s through validation. Mediation keeps everyone up to date on the changing needs of the person. Ultimately, these meetings will strengthen, protect, and reinforce the person’s financial, medical, and personal decisions.
4. The byproduct of these group meetings is transparency. And transparency naturally creates a system of checks and balances, which reduces the risk of financial loss, questionable changes to medical, or long-term decisions, extortion, abuse, and neglect.

Elder abuse is hard even for a physician or nurse to detect when a patient has Alzheimer's.

For example: I went down to my father’s house for the nurse's initial visit. Marie sat at the kitchen table when I explained to the nurse I wanted updates after their visits, which she agreed to. After the nurse went over each medication with Marie, she asked why the memantine prescription had a substantial number of pills left in the bottle. Marie had been told by the nurse that my father needed to take them twice daily, the required dosage prescribed on the bottle. Marie acknowledged she was aware of the dosage. She knew what the medication was for, yet she didn’t give it to him.
Memantine was the Alzheimer’s drug for memory enhancement. It was prescribed by his Alzheimer’s physician. I was at the appointment with Marie and my husband when he went over the dosage with her and us.
Marie took it upon herself to cut it in half. Memantine wasn’t a cure. It didn’t stop or reverse Alzheimer’s; it helped to improve memory and awareness.
Because the nurse corrected Marie, I thought she’d give him the accurate dosage. But I found out two months later that she had continued to cut his memory enhancement dosage in half.

My father’s cognitive impairment was severely impaired during the last five months of his life. Marie drove and took my father everywhere, including his primary care physician appointments. My father relied on Marie. He didn’t retain information, and he confused instructions. The primary care physician decided on my father’s healthcare based on Marie’s beliefs, opinions, and her narrative of me. When I looked at my father’s medical records, I discovered that the primary care physician had noted family tension. The daughter has power of attorney and is the health care proxy. She does not agree with the treatment course for the father and wife. But my father’s medical decisions were his. Marie and my father did not make joint medical care decisions. And the physician, without discussing it with me or the three of us together, made an opinion solely based on what Marie told her. The physician formed an opinion and a belief based on partial information.
• Marie deliberately and willfully cut my father’s dosage of memantine in half. My father relied solely on Marie, who was his caretaker, to give him his medications. The medication she cut in half prevented my father from having the full benefit of memantine. Studies have shown that this drug increases memory, awareness, and concentration.
This drug might have allowed him to recall a memory, what was happening at the moment, and to calm the agitation he felt after sundown. But Marie willfully deprived him of the full dosage, lowering his chances of it ever happening.
“Willful deprivation is a type of elder abuse. It means denying an older adult medication, medical care, shelter, food, a therapeutic device, or other physical assistance, and exposing that person to the risk of physical, mental, or emotional harm—except when the older, competent adult has expressed a desire to go without such care.” From the National Council on Aging, “Get the Facts on Elder Abuse.”

Sharing our stories helps us to heal from these horrific tragedies. I used the pain and anger I felt as fuel to find answers for others in my book. My father was an ordinary man. As a Boston firefighter, he risked his life to save others, and now, after his death, he continues to help protect others through his story.
I know we can protect our parents, grandparents, and aging loved ones who are in decline when we learn how.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my story.