My Journey with Journalism

My long journey with journalism was signaled by my ringing phone one evening in 2006. 

Earlier that day, my lawyer filed a guardianship petition; if granted, a close friend of my grandmother, Annette de la Renta, and a financial firm, JP Morgan Chase, would become my grandmother’s guardians of the “person” and the “purse,” respectively.

I had expected this petition to be sealed, but word of its existence reached the press. Now the world would learn about the abuse and exploitation my grandmother was subjected to by my father and other perpetrators when she was ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease.

My grandmother, the prominent New York City philanthropist Brooke Astor, was well-known, and news of my guardianship petition exploded in the local media. Journalists knew the story was important. As the best-selling author Meryl Gordon recounts in her book, “Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach”:

“The next morning the Daily News hit the pavement with page one reading, “DISASTER FOR MRS. ASTOR: Son forces society queen to live on peas and porridge in dilapidated Park Avenue duplex.”

My urgent need to protect my grandmother from abuse by my father was the catalyst that set everything in motion, but it was the hard work of reporters that shined a light on my grandmother’s predicament and the scourge of elder abuse.

It’s one thing to read the news. It’s another to be in the news. It’s one thing to be interviewed by a top-tier reporter, but another thing entirely to see their stories in the weeks that followed.

The articles revealed many more egregious acts of abuse by my father than I ever suspected. It became clear to me that investigative journalism plays a vital role in addressing social harms and could aid me in what became my passion project: raising awareness of elder abuse and protecting those at risk from exploitation.

Years later, in an interview with Jason Karlawish for Making Sense of Alzheimer’s (July 28, 2017). I described what I saw when I went to my grandmother’s home unaccompanied by my father who was a vigilant gatekeeper.

“I snuck in with the help of my grandmother’s staff and caregivers, sat down with two nurses and they just explained how wrong things were. I didn’t need to look far. The place was cold, the parquet floor on the dining room was the litter box for the dogs and there was what I’ll call medicinal deprivation. Nurses were taking money out of their pockets to buy things for her.”

Much has changed in the years since that initial phone call from a reporter.

My grandmother died in 2007 at the age of 105. Two years later, my father was indicted (and later convicted) for stealing and defrauding her. I continued on my own path, working as a professor of historic preservation and advocating for elder justice. I often told my students: If you want to write about history and save the past, be a preservationist; if you want to write the first draft of history and inform our future, be a journalist.

I’ve learned a great deal about the relationship between social harms, how journalists expose these ills and how media coverage and pressure can help fuel systemic change.

The court did grant my guardianship petition, which allowed my grandmother to spend her last days as she wished: in her country house, with loved ones, and free from fear.

I sought guardianship for my grandmother because it was the only way I could protect her from my father, who had control over her by holding her health-care proxy and power of attorney.

Guardianship helped save my grandmother’s life.

But my involvement in the elder justice community over the past decade-and-a-half has taught me that guardianship is an institution that desperately needs reform.

As expressed in Guardianship: Remedy vs. Enabler of Elder Abuse, an issue brief by the National Center on Elder Abuse (August 2021)—available at Mistreatment and Abuse by Guardians and Other Fiduciaries, Elder Justice Initiative, U.S. Department of Justice:

“Guardianship plays two opposing roles in the world of elder abuse. Often guardians are heroes — preventing, detecting and remedying abuse, neglect and exploitation, and improving the quality of life of at-risk older adults. Yet at other times, as we know from shocking media exposes, guardians are the villains, taking advantage of those they were named to protect.”

Adult guardianship abuse and financial exploitation is an epidemic that deprives people of their constitutional and human rights, steals their wealth, diminishes their self-worth, and is criminal. Too often, it is sanctioned by courts that turn a blind eye to the mistreatment.

Today, victims of this crime may be strangers. Tomorrow, they may be our loved ones. Perhaps, in the future, they may be ourselves.