Crime Victims with Developmental Disabilities Report of a Workshop (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Nature and Extent
Nature and Extent
Pages 5-21
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From page 5... ...
This chapter draws primarily on the workshop papers by Ruth Luckasson, Patricia Sullivan, and Richard McCleary and Douglas Wiebe, as well as the workshop presentation by Mary Ann Curry and Laurie Powers. Brief biographies of the authors of papers summarized in this report can be found in the Appendix.
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From page 6... ...
According to the Arc of the United States an advocacy organization formerly called Association for Retarded Citizens of the United States a review of a number of prevalence studies indicates that 2.5 to 3 percent of the general population has mental retardation or a developmental disability (Batshaw, 19971. Applying Batshaw's percentages to the 1990 census of the general population, the Arc of the United States estimates that 6 to 8 million people nationwide have mental retardation (Arc of the United States, 19981.
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From page 7... ...
The Medical Model The medical model of disability pertains to maternal and child health and is predicated on the need to provide some type of health care service to children with developmental disabilities. According to the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health's definition, "children with special health care needs" are children with health problems that require more than routine and basic health care, and they include "children with or at risk of disabilities, chronic illnesses and conditions and health-related education or behavioral problems." The definition also includes "children who have or are at increased risk for chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emo
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From page 8... ...
, serious emotional disturbance, orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, or specific learning disabilities." Specific learning disability is further defined as "a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations." The act provides further definitions of the disabilities of infants and toddlers. During the 1993-1994 school year, some 5 million children and youth with disabilities in the United States received special education services.
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From page 9... ...
benefits are provided to almost 1 million children age 18 and younger and 7 million adults age 19 and older. The SSI definition of disability for children requires "a child to have a physical or mental condition or conditions that can be medically proven and that result in marked or severe functional limitations." Of the almost 900,000 children with disabilities who receive SSI, the majority live in households in which basic food, clothing, and shelter needs are lacking; some 40 percent are classified as mentally retarded; and 24 percent receive benefits for a mental disorder other than mental retardation.
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From page 10... ...
and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BIS)
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From page 11... ...
Although there is little empirical research, published findings consistently support the anecdotal evidence. One review of the available literature concluded as a conservative estimate that people with developmental disabilities are 4 to 10 times more likely to be victims of crimes than other people are (Sobsey et al., 19951.
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From page 12... ...
This study also found extremely low rates of reporting to the police: 40 percent of the crimes against people with mild mental retardation went unreported, and 71 percent of those against people with severe mental retardation went unreported (Wilson and Brewer, 19921. Given the paucity of crime victimization data collected on people with disabilities in general, it is not surprising that minimal research has been conducted on infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities as victims of conventional violent crimes.
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From page 13... ...
Asked about strategies that might help to stop or prevent abuse by personal assistants, both groups of women mentioned the same 6 strategies in the top 10 but in a different order. The six were: choose own personal assistant, back-up personal assistant available, set limits with personal assistant, clearly stated job description, emergency transportation, and clear communication.
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From page 14... ...
The Canadian National Clearinghouse on Family Violence reports on a study that found that 40 percent of women with disabilities had been assaulted, raped or abused, and 39 percent of ever-married women with a disability had been physically or sexually assaulted by their partners (Roeher Institute, 19941. The National Institutes of Health studied 860 women, 439 of whom were disabled and found matching levels of reported physical abuse (36 percent in both groups)
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From page 15... ...
The authors concluded that battered women, particularly those who experience extensive physical abuse, are at risk for posttraumatic stress disorder. Because this study was not longitudinal and involved retrospective self-reports regarding the severity of abuse, it is difficult to determine whether the posttraumatic stress disorder was present in some subjects before the abuse occurred or resulted from some other trauma.
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From page 16... ...
Perception of High Prevalence Rates Because of their vulnerability and greater need for care, children with disabilities are presumed to be at higher risk for abuse by parents and other caregivers than are other children. For example, some authors argue that children with mental retardation are at greater risk because ordinary standards of care are inadequate for them (Schilling and Schinke, 1984)
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From page 17... ...
Although the majority of child protective service workers believe that children with disabilities are at increased risk for maltreatment, most have never served clients with disabilities and are not trained to effectively diagnose disabilities (Schilling et al., 19861. Abuse Among Samples of Children with Disabilities Prevalence rates of sexual abuse among the mentally retarded have been found to range from a low of 3 percent (Hard, 1986)
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From page 18... ...
Results indicated that sexual abuse or a combination of sexual and physical abuse were the most common forms of maltreatment the children experienced. The majority of subjects had communication disorders, including speech or hearing impairments, learning disabilities, and cleft lip or palate.
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From page 19... ...
The school-based study merged almost 50,000 records from Omaha public and parochial schoolchildren matriculated during the 1994-1995 school year with the Nebraska central registry of abuse and neglect cases, the foster care review board, and Omaha police records of child maltreatment (Sullivan and Knutson, 1999b)
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From page 20... ...
Unfortunately, follow-up data on the nature and extent of the child's disability status typically do not cover events beyond the resolution of the acute trauma. Institutional Abuse Approximately 2 percent of the 4.5 million children and youth with disabilities in the United States live in institutions, including nursing homes; schools for the blind, deaf, and physically disabled; institutions for the mentally retarded; and facilities for the mentally ill.
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From page 21... ...
Available data on abuse among people with clisabilities are problematic because of the differing operational definitions of maltreatment, poorly defined heterogeneous populations with clisabilities, ancl questionable valiclation procedures for determining clisabilities (Ammerman et al., 1988; Knutson, 1988; Knutson ancl Schartz, 19971. For chilclren, merely using central registries of child abuse ancl neglect to establish a link between abuse ancl clisabilities will not alleviate the problem.
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