Elder abuse is prevalent in New Zealand, with one in ten people aged 65 and older experiencing some form of it and only one in 14 abuse cases brought to the attention of a service agency that can intervene.
Last year alone there were numerous media reports featuring accounts of neglect, financial exploitation and physical or verbal abuse of older people.
However, elder abuse is notoriously difficult to study. Those experiencing abuse often avoid disclosing these experiences for a variety of complex reasons. It is often friends, other family members, neighbours or practitioners who realise that something harmful is happening to the older person.
Some forms of ill treatment are immediately identifiable as abuse. But elder abuse can also be very subtle, which makes it difficult for older people to pinpoint when it happens and for others in the community to recognise it.
Our recent study explores a poorly understood form of elder abuse known as “cold violence” within the Chinese community in Aotearoa New Zealand. We interviewed older Chinese migrants, midlife Chinese migrants caring for older parents and practitioners supporting Chinese migrant families.
Although participants saw similarities in types of elder abuse across cultural groups, they described cold violence as particularly common.
What is ‘cold violence’
Cold violence is a form of emotional abuse that occurs within care relationships. It happens when the person with more power and resources in the relationship completely and intentionally withdraws communication and emotional support for a sustained period. Cold violence is used to punish people for particular conduct or to limit their independence and freedom.
This form of abuse is incredibly difficult to detect. Other forms of abuse have clear signs. Physical abuse may leave telltale marks. Suspicious bank transactions can be monitored and traced. Signs of neglect may be seen in malnutrition and poor hygiene. They are materially evident.
Cold violence, on the other hand, is open to interpretation. By strategically withdrawing emotional support and care, people can powerfully punish the older person without leaving any evidence, thus maintaining plausible deniability.
This makes cold violence difficult for older people to identify and for service providers or authorities to challenge. Family members and carers can argue they didn’t do anything wrong. This failure to respond to need is what makes cold violence a form of abuse.
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Understanding the context
Participants in our study commonly mentioned refusal to engage with older family members.
It’s like they see you but act as if they don’t.
Chinese culture values filial reverence and there is an expectation that the concerns and needs of older generations are prioritised. Being rejected by family is very damaging.
Consequently, older Chinese people in our study considered cold violence as the most unacceptable form of abuse that can happen to an older person. They told us that withdrawal of verbal communication and emotional care was made worse by demeaning nonverbal behaviours, such as looks of “disdain” or “disgust”.
They agreed that being treated this way had a “negative impact on their mental health”, making them “feel heartbroken”. One participant likened it to mental torture.
Experiencing cold violence can also leave older people unable to meet their basic needs. In the context of Chinese family arrangements, older parents who migrated in later life are often highly dependent on younger family members.
They might lack language skills, the ability to drive and knowledge of institutional systems necessary to independently navigate everyday life. In these situations, the withdrawal by family members is a highly destabilising experience, leaving older people unsure how to act and often without alternative sources of support.
Making sense of cold violence
Family carers are commonly under significant financial, emotional and time pressure and receive relatively little formal support for care. However, there was a clear mismatch between how practitioners and family carers framed emotional withdrawal as carer stress and the way it was experienced by older people as cold violence.
Chinese migrants providing care for older parents agreed that cold violence was concerning. However, they saw it as the unintentional outcome of limited time and resources. As one participant explained:
There are old people above and young children below, and their energy is limited […] They have tried their best.
Practitioners also attributed neglectful behaviour to carer stress.
This mismatch highlights the need to understand older people’s perspectives and to provide continuous education about less obvious forms of elder abuse. Awareness raising should extend beyond older people to include family members, practitioners and the wider community.
Cold violence is not unique to the Chinese community, but it may be experienced differently across cultural groups. Regardless of the cultural context, being treated in this way is an unsettling and undermining experience for older people.
We have a collective responsibility to create safe environments for people to be able to age with dignity. This starts with understanding how our actions can intentionally or unintentionally cause harm to older people in our families and communities.
