Thank you for your question, Mr. Jacob. You hit on a critical point in my view.
I am going to share the findings of an American research team led by Terry Fulmer. She did a wonderful job of showing the importance of considering vulnerability, which is often linked to factors that are much more personal to the older person. She differentiated between those factors and risk factors. In her study, she categorized the older person's entire group of family and friends, including the abuser, as a risk factor.
What she ended up showing is key as I see it. In certain cases, an older person can, on an objective level, be very vulnerable owing to cognitive losses, health problems or some other issue, but never suffer from elder abuse because they have an appropriate group of family and friends.
Unfortunately, the reverse is also possible, where an older person can, on an objective level, exhibit little or no vulnerability and yet still suffer from elder abuse. Why? Because someone in the older person's group of friends and family is looking to exercise their power over the older person or commit a wrongdoing against them.
Therefore, you cannot assess the incidence of abuse by looking solely at the characteristics of the older person. You must always take into account the person's interaction or dynamic with the friend or family member inflicting the abuse. When you focus only on a senior's vulnerability, the view you get is only partial, and a biased one at that, I would venture to say.