Violence against women is a serious problem that results in injury, emotional harm and, at worst, death. Barriers that women with disabilities face in attempting to address the violence in their lives and to escape abuse is often amplified.
Women with disabilities face additional lack of access to emergency transportation, lack of knowledge and understanding of professionals within legal systems, inaccessible community based programs, lack of support for mothers with disabilities, and lack of access to education, training and secure quality jobs.
Women with disabilities and Intimate Partners
“Women with disabilities and Deaf women are at least one-and-a-half to two times more likely than non-disabled women to experience abuse. Depending on the nature of their disability,some women face challenges both in identifying their experience as abuse and reporting it to the police. For example, women with intellectual disabilities may have difficulty recognizing their experience as abuse,” says the 2004 Kingston Independent Living Resource Centre handbook entitled: "Violence Against Women with Disabilities.”
A woman with a mobility disability may not be able to call for help if her attacker
has placed the telephone out of her reach. A deaf woman may be faced with no available TTY (Text Telephone), and other related accessible communication services may take too long to process in a crisis situation.
Women with Disabilities and Sexual Abuse
Fifty percent of women with disabilities have been sexually abused as children, and 39-68% of girls with developmental disabilities will be assaulted before the age of 18. Research also shows that increased rates of child sexual abuse puts one at increased risk for abuse in adulthood.
People with disabilities are more likely to be subjected to sexual abuse and assault than their non-disabled peers. The exact degree of risk appears to be at least 150% of that for individuals of the same sex and similar age without disabilities. (Kingston Independent Living Resource Centre)
Women who have speech, hearing and/or visual impairments, women with develpmental disabilities and women with multiple disabilities can have difficulty attracting help, resisting during sexual assault and/or difficulty in identifying their assailant. Women with disabilities often have very few resources and may have had little opportunity to understand the justice system. Often, reporting the abuse can be as devastating and as traumatic an experience as the violence itself.
For women who have children, there is an additional demon to face: The fear that they may lose their children. Many women with disabilities do lose their children. In what they see as 'the best interests of the child' Judges may decide that a parent who has no disability, even an abusive parent, is more capable of caring for a child than is a woman with a disability.
Women with disabilities are in fact less likely to disclose violence or abuse because:
- The nature of their disability may interfere with their ability to communicate exactly what happened;
- They might be afraid of being labeled a troublemaker or a liar;
- They might be afraid of losing essential services or being institutionalized;
- They might not recognize the abuse as violent and inappropriate;
- They might be socially and physically isolated and as a result, are unaware of their basic rights, services available to them, or options for action.
Although women with disabilities constitute approximately 16% of the Canadian population, their voices and issues have largely been excluded from the area of violence against women. Sadly but predictably, it seems that the multiple disabilities seem to correlate with multiple experiences of violence(Kingston Independent Living Resource Centre).
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