The brutal beating of Helen Love could have happened to any of our grandparents who are in nursing homes.

Though Love died two days after being viciously attacked by a member of the nursing staff in a Sacramento, Calif., nursing home in 1998, the prevalence of the widespread elder abuse in nursing homes did not die with her.

Last Monday on a videotape shown at the Senate Aging Committee hearing on nursing home abuses, Love sat with a metal band pinned to her skull and described the 1998 beating she said was committed by a caretaker after she soiled herself.

In a slurred voice, the elderly woman described the incidents to lawyers.

“”He started beating me all along the bed, he choked me and he went and broke my neck,”” she said. “”He broke my wrist bones, my hand. He put his hand over my mouth.””

The brutal treatment Love suffered, unfortunately, is not as rare as many might believe.

According to the committee’s findings, nursing home patients have been dragged down hallways, doused with ice water, sexually assaulted and beaten in their beds.

The Senate committee found that nursing homes rarely call the police for attacks that would bring an automatic response if they occurred elsewhere.

Consequently, few cases of elder abuse are prosecuted. Love was lucky; she had an attentive son who stayed in contact with his elderly mother. When her son discovered the beating the next day, he immediately reported it to the police. Love’s attacker eventually pleaded no contest in the 1998 attack and served one year in prison.

However, for those elderly in nursing homes who don’t have attentive families or relatives in the area, the code of silence in these nursing homes will not be broken, and the cycle of abuse continues to go unchecked.

Hope is not completely lost for the forgotten and neglected elderly who have no one to fight for them. The Senate committee plans to dig deeper and review cases in which nursing homes attempted to conceal incidents of abuse and improperly reported the abuse to police.

One such case is that of Helen Straukamp, who was knocked unconscious by another resident at a nursing home in Indiana in September 1999. Straukamp died a month later from the injuries. The ensuing investigation revealed that the nursing home initially reported to a hospital that she had fallen. Yet Straukamp’s autopsy uncovered the nursing home’s lies, proving she had been beaten to death.

The actions of these two nursing homes do not inspire much confidence in the nursing care provided to millions of our grandparents in this country. In fact, the abusive treatment by so many nursing homes is truly frightening.

According to the committee’s findings, about 1.6 million Americans are cared for in 17,000 nursing homes throughout the United States. This means that these 1.6 million people, mainly elderly, are at immense risk and danger of being abused at the hands of those entrusted to care for them.

The figures provided by the committee show that from July through September 2000, nearly 26 percent of nursing homes were cited for violations of actual harm to the patients, poor record-keeping, failure to put into practice policies to prevent abuse, and failure to report abuse promptly to the police.

Twenty-six percent of nursing homes in the country is a large and completely unacceptable proportion. But I believe the incident rate of abuse is actually much higher.

When I volunteered at a nursing home in the Bay Area three years ago, I saw firsthand the range of unreported elder abuse that occurs. Nurses ignored the patients for hours, leaving them in their own feces and urine or to endure agonizing pain because they weren’t given their pain medicine on time.

The patients begged me to get a nurse or doctor, but no matter how much I went and nagged, the nurses and staff continued with their two-hour breaks, laughing and joking about the condition of the patients.

I wrote a letter to the state health board detailing the abuse I witnessed, and the nursing home was audited. What reform occurred, I’ll never know. But I’ll never forget the pleadings of Ann or Mrs. Holden for help, and I could do nothing about it.

I’m positive that negligent abuse is not as widely reported as harsher abuses because it is subtle and unseen unless you spend many hours a day at a nursing home. The problem with abuse by neglect is that there are no physical, outward signs that could trigger alarm from families or advocates. A recurring skin rash or taciturn demeanor can be passed off as due to old age or bad health.

Ultimately, no abuse at the hands of nursing staff can be tolerated. The Senate committee’s investigation is the first step in breaking the code of silence and abuse committed by nursing homes.

The rest is up to us. We must be vigilant and pressure our elected representative to pass stricter laws holding nursing homes accountable and responsible for their actions. Only then will our grandparents be safe.