Elderly Sexual Abuse

Abstract

In recent years, thanks to rapidly developing medicine, it is becoming possible to detect, treat and diagnose diseases that for many decades were considered incurable. Consequently, we are dealing with a significant increase in life expectancy and a rapid increase in the number of the elderly in the society in recent years. As the statistics show, this number will increase even more in the coming years, so there is a need to pay attention to this social group. Elderly people, especially those living alone and suffering from cognitive and memory disorders that accompany Alzheimer's disease, are a group particularly vulnerable to various forms of violence. In Polish literature on the subject and in the media, much attention is paid to the physical, mental and financial form of abuse. Sexual abuse is not mentioned at all in the context of this social group, which does not mean that it does not exist. This situation is often caused by stereotypes according to which, the elderly are asexual and not attractive enough to be victims of sexual violence. This article pays attention to the definitions of sexual abuse against the elderly, the scale of the problem, risk factors for this form of violence or its consequences, including: physiological-somatic, psychological-emotional, sexual and socio-cognitive ones. The last part of the text is devoted to prevention of sexual violence among the elderly.