It was a protracted battle that spanned the last days of a famous broadcaster, and continued after his death. And it was an experience that changed Kerri Kasem's life.
Kasem, daughter of the late DJ and voice actor Casey Kasem, had her own thriving career as a radio host when her father was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia (the same condition Robin Williams had when he died) in 2013. What followed was a bitter public dispute between the Kasem siblings and Kasem's wife Jean over the ailing man's care and, soon after, his remains. At one point, Jean even reportedly threw raw meat at Kerri after the younger woman had been granted visitation.
Since her father's 2014 death, Kasem has become an outspoken advocate against elder abuse, launching the Kasem Cares foundation, lobbying for family visitation rights and even sometimes publicly sparring with former Harvey Weinstein lawyer Lisa Bloom.
Family and end-of-life rights don't make for sexy headlines, but anyone who has parents or children or who plans on dying someday needs to know how best to protect themselves and their loved ones. Salon spoke recently to Kasem about her career transformation, and why you need to talk to your parents right now.
This whole experience has been a tremendous education for you about the rights of family members. Can you take me through a little bit of what you’ve learned, and what someone as a family member might be unpleasantly surprised to discover when an elderly family member goes into care or is dealing with issues like dementia?
Prevention is the key. Once you're in it, it is very, very difficult to win any kind of case, to see your parents again, to get help. It’s very hard. What you need to do is preventative. If you have anybody who’s considered a caretaker of the elderly individual, if that person has the power of attorney or a guardianship over that person and they start to isolate that individual, you’re in trouble.
I tell people, grab your camera phone and get your parents in front of you — or you yourself as parents — and say, "If while I’m sick and unable to care for myself or speak the person who is taking care of me isolates me and keeps me from my family and my friends, they should be removed from my care immediately." You need to hold up a newspaper; you need to give that tape to all your family members. It’s very, very important that you have that and that still may not win you any visitation. You’ve got to have that person saying that, so that it can be played in front of the judge, played in front of social workers that come. Or if you have to call for a welfare check, you can say, “Listen, this is what my dad wants, this is what my mom wants.” That’s very, very important that you have that preventative measure.
The first step to any form of abuse is isolation. You isolate the individual and then you can physically abuse them, financially abuse them, sexually abuse them, verbally abuse them and medically abuse them. My belief is you can do whatever you want, once that individual is isolated. What the Kasem Cares Visitation Bill does is to remove the isolation factor, to where you can ask a judge for visitation without going into an entire fight over the power of attorney or a guardianship. It’s as simple a thing as, “Hey, my dad and mom are being isolated from me.” Instead of the kids having to prove they’re good kids, it’s up to the isolator to prove why this mom or dad doesn’t deserve having their family around in their time of need.
Every state is different. Some laws are stronger and better in certain states, some are weaker and not very good. But this the first step is changing laws and giving adult children more rights to their parents. Because right now, you turn 18, you have zero rights to see your parents. If someone in a residential house doesn’t want you in that house, there is nothing you can do. The police can’t help you; adult protective services can’t help you. If they’re in an assisted living, same thing. There is a resident's bill of rights that was created almost 30 years ago, for nursing homes and hospitals, and it states that a person living or a staying in a hospital or a nursing home has every right to see anybody they want. It doesn’t matter who. We have that going for us, but it does not extend to residential or assisted living.
This is not just about families that are in show business or have a lot of money. It’s so much about control and about vindictiveness and about settling scores.
This is why we have been doing a documentary. . . . It was overwhelming how many families were going through this, and the only time you’ve heard about this is when it was a celebrity case.
It crosses all social and economic gaps. It’s everywhere. My documentary does highlight the Rooneys and the Campbells and my case and a couple of other ones. Most of it is people that don’t have famous last names, that don’t have money to fight this.
Explain to me how someone who is not an abusive offspring, who is not an abusive family member, would be able use these new means of access.
Using the Kasem Cares legislation bill, they can go in, instead of going through an entire fight, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, fighting the power of attorney. If it’s against the wife for her husband, forget it, you’re not going to win. They told me that the entire time I was fighting for my dad. What this does is gets rid of all that, gets rid of the trial, gets rid of the fighting. It’s basically, “Hey, I want to see my mom or I want to see my dad. They were isolated, and we’re not bad kids and dad and mom would want to see us.”
There are also other things where, if they’re in the guardianship or power of attorney, that if the ailing parent goes into the hospital for certain amount of dates, they have to go to notify the family. If the person dies, they have to notify the family. Where the person’s buried, they have to tell them. Nowadays, you do not see any of that. They don’t have to tell you when they’re in the hospital, they don’t have to tell you when they died and sometimes people find out their parents died because they read it in the obituary. Or somebody calls and says, “I read this.” It’s horrible. It’s horrible. So that really curbs that.
Now, not only do we have to get the bill, now we have to go and we have to go to the radio and television and tell people about the bill. Even judges don’t know about the bill. It’s very hard and what I learned is, yes, there are some people who are using it who are successful, but others, the judges don’t even know about it.
We’re talking to some congressmen to go federal, but here’s the thing. Probate, family law, you have to go state to state, you cannot go federally. We put it in the family law codes because if you call somebody a criminal and they are in the criminal codes, they’re going to fight. It’s less likely you’re going to get visitation. If you put it in the probate codes, they’re like, “Hey, you’re isolating, that’s not okay, let’s get you some visitation." But if there is no criminal aspect to it, the family member is probably going to visitation.
You’re deescalating it.
Yeah. We’re trying, but we don’t know if it’s working because these people are so evil. They’re cut from the same cloth. They say the same things about the children, they do the exact same things. “Your dad’s too tired, your mom’s too tired to come to the phone. They have a doctor’s appointment." They're just constantly telling why they can’t talk to them. It starts that way and then it’s, “Well, this kid did this.” Then the lies start coming.
When someone finds themselves in a situation like you did, give me some of the red flags that would be a tipoff that maybe my dad, my mom could be in jeopardy, could be endangered and could be now be isolated.
A lot of times you’ll see it years beforehand. They’ll isolate friends. They put a block in between friends and visitation. That person has to be there listening to every conversation, they can’t go anywhere alone. You’ll see that ahead of time.
Which, by the way, is classic abuser behavior. You see this in domestic abuse, you see it in child abuse. It’s the same playbook, just applied to different victims.
I say that all the time. It’s the same in any abuse case. It can be child abuse, it can be domestic violence. Abusers do the same thing. People just need to get better at seeing it and looking at it and recognizing it.
It’s also, little by little, talking about how bad this person is or what this person did or how we shouldn’t be talking to this person any more. And then it’s, “Well, they can’t come to the phone.” This is the big classic one. “They’re too tired; they can’t come to the phone.” Bullshit. Bullshit, that doesn’t happen. People who are old and lonely and sick, they want to hear from their loved ones. “The doctor said” -- that’s another one. Not allowing you to go to doctor’s visits, that's another flag. Not allowing you to know what medications they’re on, another flag.
I just want to say there are kids who are hurtful to their parents. Not all kids are good. Most abuse happens from family members. So if a parent really doesn’t want to see their kids; there is no forced visitation with the bill. None.
Part of the reason that it’s so hard to get momentum around these issues is that end of life and the elderly are not necessarily the most media-friendly topics. The only way that these stories get traction is when they're surrounding a celebrity.
That’s very true and it’s unfortunate. I say it all the time. It’s like nobody cares unless you’re a beloved celebrity. And then you know how frustrating it is for those people who don’t have that celebrity last name. It's like nobody cares; it’s just horrifically frustrating.
Tell me a little bit about why you went public in scrapping up a little bit with Lisa Bloom, because I've seen you say you actually have no beef with her mother [Gloria Allred]. You like her mother.
I do, because I’ve done some radio shows with her. I don’t agree with her politically. I don’t agree with a lot of the cases she takes on but that’s OK. I respect her, I think she believes in what she does. I think she really believes it.
I do not find that to be the case with the daughter and that’s my opinion. She doesn't, in my opinion, do things for the right reasons.
You have changed the entire direction of your life and your career in the last four years because of this issue and because of your personal experience. That is a profound thing to do. That is a profound leap. Why is this so important?
I went through hell the first couple of years because I quit my syndicated radio show with Clear Channel. I knew that I either quit the show and I fight for my dad or go on the road with my show and I continue to make good money. I thought, no way, I’m going to fight for my dad. I’m going to stay here, I’m going to see my dad again, and that’s when I knew. I formed my nonprofit. I did everything I could to stay afloat while I changed my entire life. I was very scared, but it was also so rewarding and so satisfying that I was doing something that would help people that would make a difference in this world. That meant more to me than the money I was making and the show I had. It’s given my life more purpose and it’s hard. It’s not easy and I don’t know if I’ll do this for the rest of my life. But I’m sure as hell going to change the laws in this country until I’m satisfied with them.
What do you want to see happen next?
Creating more awareness for this and changing the laws federally and state by state. There need to be stronger laws against this type of elder abuse. Guardianships, which are extremely dangerous, need reform now, right now, today. The feds are finally coming in and arresting guardians who are predatory. [These guardians] isolate [their charges], they sell off their house, they sell off their possessions, they kill their animals. These people — and not all guardians, but the ones I come in contact with — they are soulless. They are evil, and I see so many families destroyed by an outside guardian who doesn’t know the family. They isolate that individual and they say, “No visitation.”
That person dies, all their effects are gone, the kids don’t know where they’re buried, the kids don’t know where mom and dad's ashes are. . . . When you put somebody under guardianship, you remove all of their constitutional rights. They can’t drive, they can’t vote, they can’t talk, they have no decisions on their medical [treatment].
We are in a very mortality-denying society and we don’t like to think that that could be me cut off from my children. That could be me cut off from my family. This isn’t just about millions of dollars. It’s about your parents' remains; it’s about things that maybe were in your family home that have literally no value to anyone but you. It’s, "Oh, I have no photographs anymore."
That’s right. My dad’s plaques and awards he won mean nothing to anybody. That’s all we wanted. We wanted what meant something to my dad.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Shares