Elizabeth Podnieks Asked Us a Question.  We Are Still Learning to Answer It.

By Philip C. Marshall

June 15 marks the 20th anniversary of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. It is also the third year without its founder, Dr. Elizabeth Podnieks. 

At 94, she co-edited a landmark scholarly collection, The Worldwide Face of Elder Abuse, alongside Pamela Teaster and Georgia Anetzberger. In its final chapter, she and her colleague E. Carlisle Shealy left the field with a question: “We ask the question, ‘Why have their voices not been heard?’ And, have we even asked for them?” 

I know that question from the inside. In June 2006 — the same month, just blocks from the United Nations where the first WEAAD was being launched — I was trying to save my grandmother, Brooke Astor. She was being abused by my father. I had not known that one in ten older adults experiences abuse. 

What connects them is the question Elizabeth was already asking: whose voices are heard when an older adult is in danger — and have we even thought to ask for them?

The reason that question is still necessary is ageism. Robert Butler, who coined the term in 1969, defined it as systematic stereotyping and discrimination against people because they are old. It operates not only through cruelty but through kindness — the assumption that older adults need to be protected rather than heard, spoken for rather than spoken to. Ageism is the predicate of elder abuse: it makes exploitation feel like protection, and removal of rights feel like care.

Elizabeth combatted this in her scholarship and in her practice of living. She showed up, year after year, as an older adult not diminished by age but deepened by it. In 2018, Elizabeth and I shared a WEAAD message: end ageism through #engageism — the practice of remaining present to older adults and receiving what they bring. Not tolerating age. Encountering it.

The field has organized itself around three prepositions. By elders: the myth of full independence — dismantled by the disability rights movement, which recognized that dependency is not an exception to the human condition but part of it. For elders: the paternalism of pure advocacy, organized around the older adult as passive recipient — the preposition that, taken to its legal extreme, justifies guardianship, the court-ordered replacement of a person’s legal agency by a stranger. With elders: the genuine advance Elizabeth argued for — older adults as partners, not objects, and the standard the field is still working to meet. But “with” is not yet enough. 

Martin Buber distinguished between I-It relations — in which the other is present, attended to, even well served, but not genuinely met — and I-Thou, in which one enters into relation as an event rather than a structure. Elizabeth’s question was a demand for I-Thou. Not inclusion in our processes. Transformation by the older adult’s presence. 

And Buber teaches something else: even an authentic two-person relation is structurally vulnerable. The answer is not to replace relationships. It is to surround them. A circle of support — family and friends, neighbors and community, professionals and advocates — is the formal expression of a truth that has always existed: resilience comes not from a single relationship but from relationships within relationships.

If Buber teaches us the importance of encounter, circles of support teach us the importance of structure. Supported independence holds both together. It is not a statute. It is not a mechanism. It is a promise — that human dignity does not expire with age or disability, and that the law's obligation at moments of vulnerability is to honor the person rather than replace them.

In this anniversary year of the nation’s founding, two hundred and fifty years after the Preamble committed the new republic to securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, that promise is still being tested — most acutely at the moments when age or disability makes a person least able to claim it. Supported independence is the standard against which that test is measured. It asks the questions the current system too rarely asks: What does this person retain? What do they value? What supports would allow them to exercise their own judgment, manage the practical activities of daily life, and sustain the relationships of daily loving — rather than have any of it replaced? And what justification exists — specific, functional, and reviewable — for any restriction that remains?

Dignity requires both. The encounter, and the structure that sustains it.

Elizabeth passed each of us the baton. The question is whether we are running toward the older adult at the center — or still running the old race, in their name, without them.

End ageism through engageism. That was Elizabeth’s message and practice. It is still ours: to practice — to meet.

Philip C. Marshall is the founder of BeyondBrooke.org. He is the grandson of Brooke Astor, whose abuse by his father led to a landmark 2006 guardianship case. He collaborated with Dr. Elizabeth Podnieks on WEAAD advocacy, alongside many in the elder justice field who carry her work forward.

Sources — 

• Buber, M. (1923/1970). I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Charles Scribner’s Sons. [I-Thou / I-It distinction; entering into relation as an event rather than a structure.]

• Butler, R.N. (1969). “Age-ism: Another Form of Bigotry.” The Gerontologist, 9(4), 243–246. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/9.4_Part_1.243. [Source for the coining of the term “ageism” in 1969.]

• Lachs, M.S. and Pillemer, K.A. (2015). “Elder Abuse.” New England Journal of Medicine, 373(20), 1947–1956. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMra1404688. [Source for the approximately 10% elder abuse prevalence figure.]

• Legacy.com. “Elizabeth Podnieks Obituary.” The Globe and Mail. Published 2024. https://www.legacy.com/ca/obituaries/theglobeandmail/name/elizabeth-podnieks-obituary?id=54336153

• Marshall, P.C. and Podnieks, E. (2018). “End Ageism Through #Engageism” [Graphic submitted to the National Center on Elder Abuse for World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, #WEAAD2018]. Originally published by the National Center on Elder Abuse. Reproduced in: “Philip Marshall Advocates for Advocacy: Fighting for Justice for the Elderly.” RWU Hawks Herald, Roger Williams University. https://rwuhawksherald.com/4298/features/philip-marshall-advocates-for-advocacy-fighting-for-justice-for-the-elderly/. Note: The original graphic was submitted to the National Center on Elder Abuse in 2018 and appeared on their website prior to a site redesign. The RWU Hawks Herald article above reproduces the graphic and confirms both the 2018 WEAAD context and the collaboration between Philip C. Marshall and Dr. Elizabeth Podnieks. The original NCEA submission is available upon request.

• Podnieks, E. and Shealy, E.C. (2023). “Elder Mistreatment, Evolving Possibilities.” In P.B. Teaster, E. Podnieks, and G. Anetzberger (Eds.), The Worldwide Face of Elder Abuse. Springer. Chapter 12. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-34888-4. [Quote in context: “We know that many elder abuse victims are all too familiar with abuse. They have been victims as children, as young adults through domestic violence, and now, in their twilight years, as older adults. We ask the question, ‘Why have their voices not been heard?’ And, have we even asked for them?”]

• Podnieks, L. (2025, June 17). Remarks delivered at the WEAAD Global Summit hosted by NAPSA [Zoom]. [Unpublished remarks. Available upon request.]

• Teaster, P.B., Podnieks, E., and Anetzberger, G. (Eds.). (2023). The Worldwide Face of Elder Abuse. Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-34888-4 [Co-editors confirmed; Elizabeth Podnieks as corresponding author of Chapter 12.]

• World Health Organization. (2021). Global Report on Ageism. Geneva: WHO. www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240020504. [Source for characterization of ageism as the most socially normalized of all prejudices.]