This was published 9 years ago
Women with disabilities more vulnerable to abuse, forum told
By Vivienne Mah
Women with disabilities are especially vulnerable to abuse but too often their accounts are ignored or dismissed, a forum in Canberra has heard.
About 100 people, including advocates and academics, gathered on Tuesday at the University of Canberra to discuss physical and sexual violence faced by those with disabilities. Convenor Sue Salthouse said the aim of Women With Disabilities Australia was to eradicate violence against women with disabilities nationwide.
“We discount their witnessing [violence] because they are not in our normal range of expectations and our normal range of experience. When we talk about an inclusive society we don’t really internalise what that means about how we act with the person who’s opposite us. We need to give credibility to those people,” she said.
Women with disabilities are 10 times more likely to suffer a variation of abuse than able-bodied women.
“It’s the power someone enacts over you in an institution and elsewhere,” Ms Salthouse said.
“Many, many, many times, a woman’s abused by her personal carer. You can imagine what it’s like for people who don’t have verbal communication.”
She said habitual put-downs eroded the self-esteem and credibility of someone with a disability, which made them less likely to report abuse.
University of Canberra professor Patricia Easteal said there was a mythology surrounding the cognitive abilities of women with disabilities when it came to criminal justice.
“[And] if you coupled the mythology of familial abuse and institutional abuse, you have a lot of obstacles to juggle, which is what scares us off from trying,” she said.
“The police and others need to be better educated on these mythologies, so they can accurately identify what’s true and what’s false. They can’t just assume that someone with a disability can’t identify who did what to them, or how.”
A WWDA pamphlet published in 2013 also suggested that violent crimes against women with disabilities were often understated in reports as "incidents" or "neglect".
But Professor Easteal said that while the ACT was taking the right steps towards rectifying the abuse, it wasn’t enough to solve one demographic’s problem.
“It’s exacerbated for certain groups of society but it’s the same problem every woman, everywhere, faces. The macro issues – if you will – of violence against women need to be addressed.”