and the guy took his money
and then took off.
Despite my dad's police report,
no one was ever charged or prosecuted.
I was a criminal defense attorney
at the time, but even still,
I was shocked that it had happened.
And as his daughter, I was horrified
that I hadn't seen it coming.
Years later, I moved to Colorado,
and I started working
as a deputy district attorney,
prosecuting crimes against older adults
and folks with disabilities.
I soon learned that there were a ton
of these crimes out there,
but not so many of them
were getting reported.
The statistics said maybe one in 14.
And when those crimes did get reported,
as I'd already seen, very few of them
got charged or prosecuted,
and only the tiniest proportion
resulted in a conviction.
So let's just think
about domestic violence
and child abuse, for a second.
Think about all the resources
of public-service campaigns
poured into those issues --
and yet, still, those crimes
remain way too high.
Efforts to address elder abuse
are said to be 20 years behind
both of those issues.