| Children who live with a physical, sensory, intellectual or mental health disability are among the most stigmatized and marginalized of all the world... |
|
| Violence Against Disabled Children |
Children who live with a physical, sensory, intellectual or mental health disability are among the most stigmatized and marginalized of all the world’s children. While all children are at risk of being victims of violence, disabled children find themselves at significantly increased risk because of stigma, negative traditional beliefs and ignorance. Lack of social support, limited opportunities for education, employment or participation in the community further isolates disabled children and their families, leading to increased levels of stress and hardship. Disabled children are also often targeted by abusers, who see them as easy victims.
This report presents the findings of the Thematic Group on Violence against Disabled Children, convened by UNICEF at UN Headquarters in New York providing comments and recommendations on violence against disabled children to be made available for the UN Secretary General’s Report on Violence against Children.
In this report, key issues on violence against children with disabilities will be reviewed. Some of the issues raised will be familiar to those who work on violence against children. Other issues will be disability-specific and even experts and advocates on violence against children may be unfamiliar with them or have not thought deeply about the implications that such practices have in relation to violence against and abuse of disabled children.
It is important to note that the factors that place disabled children at increased risk for abuse are often related to social, cultural and economic issues, and not to the actual disability itself. As such, interventions that address violence and abuse against disabled children can and should be effective if implemented with concern and resolve.
It should be noted at the outset that:
• The number of children and adolescents with disability are significant. While calculations vary depending on the specific definition of disability, using the World Health Organization’s definition of individuals with a disability as individuals having a physical, sensory (deafness, blindness), intellectual or mental health impairment, some 200 million children - 10% of the world’s young people – are born with a disability or become disabled before age 19.
• Disabled children must be included in all programs intended to end violence towards and abuse of children. Disabled children cannot wait until issues of violence and abuse are fully addressed in non-disabled children. The reasons for this are two-fold: 1) the lives of disabled children are no less valuable than the lives of all other children and the short- and long-term consequences of violence and abuse for them are no less severe; and 2) violence against children as a global problem will not be solved unless violence against the world’s million of disabled children is included as part of the overall solution.
Background
According to researchers, children with physical, sensory, intellectual or mental health impairment are at increased risk of becoming victims of violence. While the amount of research available on this population is extremely limited, particularly for disabled children in the developing world, current research indicates that violence against disabled children occurs at annual rates at least 1.7 times greater than their non-disabled peers. (1) More targeted studies also indicate reasons for serious concern. For example, one group of researchers report that 90% of individuals with intellectual impairments will experience sexual abuse at some point in the life, and a national survey of deaf adults in Norway found 80% of all deaf individuals surveyed report sexual abuse at some point in their childhood.
The specific type and amount of violence against disabled children will vary depending upon whether it occurs within the family, in the community, in institutional settings or in the work place.(4) There are however, several key issues that appear time and again when such violence occurs. Most striking is the issue of reoccurring stigma and prejudice. Throughout history many – although not all – societies have dealt poorly with disability. Cultural, religious and popular social beliefs often assume that a child is born with a disability or becomes disabled after birth as the result of a curse, ‘bad blood’, an incestuous relationships, a sin committed in a previous incarnation or a sin committed by that child’s parents or other family members.
A child born in a community where such beliefs exist is at risk in a number of ways. A child born with a disability or a child who becomes disabled may be directly subject to physical violence, or sexual, emotional or verbal abuse in the home, the community, institutional settings or in the workplace. A disabled child is more likely to face violence and abuse at birth and this increased risk for violence reappears throughout the life span. This violence compounds already existing social, educational and economic marginalization that limits the lives and opportunities of these children. For example, disabled children are far less likely than their non-disabled peers to be included in the social, economic and cultural life of their communities; only a small percentage of these children will ever attend school; a third of all street children are disabled children. Disabled children living in remote and rural areas may be at increased risk.
Settings
Violence in the home and family: In societies where there is stigma against those with disability, research indicates that some parents respond with violence because of the shame the child had brought on the family or respond with violence because a lack of social support leads to intense stress within the family. Among the violent manifestations of this are:
Infanticide & mercy killings: Disabled children may be killed either immediately at birth or at some point after birth; and sometimes years after birth. The rational for such killings is either 1) the belief that the child is evil or will bring misfortunate to the family or the community or 2) the belief that the child is suffering or will suffer and is better off dead. Often called “mercy killings” such murders are usually a response to societal beliefs about disability and lack of social support systems for individuals with disability and their family, not the actual physical condition of the child him or herself. In ‘mercy killings’ a parent or caretaker justifies withholding basic life sustaining supports (usually food, water and/or medication) or actively takes the child’s life through suffocation, strangulation or some other means, with the intention of “ending suffering.”
What links such behaviors together is that the cause of death is not the child’s disability, but actions taken on the part of the child’s parent or caretaker. Importantly, the actions of the parent or caretaker are often not taken in isolation. The decision to end the life of a disabled child may be prompted either directly with advice and counsel of medical, social, and religious leaders or family members. It may be prompted indirectly through lack of social, economic and medical support networks that leave parents feeling isolated, depressed and desperate. Cases where parents decide to end the life of a disabled child because they themselves are ill or aging and fear their child will be subjected to abuse or neglect after their own deaths are particularly heartrending. That communities often do not prosecute such forms of homicide or let the perpetrator go with a reduced punishment is recognition from the surrounding society of the lack of support and encouragement given to caring for and raising a disabled child. Importantly, in some societies, there are also often gender differences, with disabled girl infants and girl children more likely to die through ‘mercy killings’ than are boy children of the same age with comparable disabling conditions.
Physical violence, sexual, emotional and/or verbal abuse of the disabled child in a violent household: While many parents are violent towards children where no disability exists, when a disabled child lives in a violent setting his or her disability often serves to compound and intensify the nature and extent of the abuse. For example, a mobility impaired child may be less able to flee when physically or sexually assaulted. A child who is deaf may be unable to communicate about the abuse he or she faces to anyone outside his or her household, unless these outsiders speak sign language or understand the home signs the child uses. (And when the abuser is the one interpreting the child’s statement to someone outside the household, this further limits the child’s ability to report abuse or ask for help). A child who is intellectually impaired may not be savvy enough to anticipate a parent’s growing anger or know when to leave the room to avoid being struck.
Theory of child induced stress leading to violence: Several theories of child abuse state that a disabled child faces increased risk as the result of child-produced stress. It is hypothesized that this cycle of increasing tensions can begin long before the child is diagnosed as having a disability. For example, a child with a hearing impairment may be regarded as disobedient; a child with vision problems may not make eye contact and appear to be unresponsive, a child with a neurological disorder may be difficult to comfort or feed. Other researchers suggest that parents who become violent towards their disabled child are reacting not to the child’s condition alone, but to the social isolation and stigma they encounter from surrounding family, friends and neighbors. Parents of disabled children often lack social supports as family and friends distance themselves; they can find no school willing to take their child or they live in communities where there are few or no social services to help them with their child’s needs. It is possible that both child-produced stressors and social isolation are compounded to produce a stressful and potentially violent situation in a household coping with a disabled child. It is also true that not all households with disabled children are violent and even within the same communities there are coping mechanisms in some families that prevent violence, while children with identical disabilities in other households are subjected to violence. As with many aspects of violence towards disabled children, at this point, much more research is needed to allow us to adequately understand the factors that inhibit or foster violence towards these children.
Neglect as a precursor to violence: Parents may respond to the stress of caring for a disabled child with neglect rather than active violence, however when this neglect involves denial of food, medicine and other life sustaining services, it must be considered a form of violence. For example:
Neglect in providing basic/life sustaining care: The disabled child in a household may receive less food, medical care or other services. This can be subtle, for example, parents or caretakers may wait a few additional days before spending scarce money for medicine or the child may receive less food or less nutritious food than his or her sibling. The response can also be direct: refusal to continue to feed, house or cloth a child after he or she has been disabled. Such neglect can lead to further impairments in a vicious feedback feed back cycle in which the disabled child continually loses ground developmentally.
Neglect to provide disability-specific care: Disability-specific health concerns are exacerbated through neglect. For example, bed sores go unattended resulting in a potentially deadly systemic infection or a disabled child who needs assistance eating will become malnourished because no one takes enough time to adequately feed him or her.
Refusal to intervene: Family, neighbors, health care professionals or social service experts may be aware that a disabled child is being abused by parents or caretakers in the home, but are unwilling to intervene, rationalizing such violence by citing stress on parents or lack of alternative care arrangements. While deciding when to intervene to stop violence against children in the home is an issue in many societies, the neglect highlighted here is when a community does not stop violence against a disabled child that would be considered intolerable if perpetrated against a non-disabled child.
Gender specific neglect: Such neglect may be further exacerbated by gender – for example, in a study from Nepal, the survival rate for boy children several years after they have had polio is twice that for girl children, despite the fact that polio itself affects equal numbers of males and females. Neglect, in the form of the lack of adequate medical care, less nutritious food or lack of access to related resources, is the apparent cause of these deaths.
Violence and abuse linked to social isolation.
Child is shunned within the household, with few family members talking to him or her or overseeing his or her safety
The child is not allowed to leave the house or household compound. In some cases, the child is kept home to ensure his or her own safety, as parents fear that the child may be struck by a cart or abused by someone in the neighborhood. But in many other instances a child is kept isolated because the family fears the reaction from other members of the community. Children in some communities are kept shackled in windowless storerooms, hot household courtyards or dark attics for weeks, months or years, often with little or no interaction, even by those within the household. Next door neighbors may not know of the child’s existence and family members across town may be told that the child has long since died.
Abuse by support staff within the home – Parents and caretakers of disabled children must often call upon informal networks of family, friends and neighbors or formal networks of in-home nursing and attendant care to help with child care, rehabilitative or medical support.
In such instances: Physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse may take place by caregivers without the parent’s knowledge or while the parent is away.
Parents may be aware of or suspect abuse, but feel there are no alternatives to help with the care of the disabled child and thus be unwilling to admit, confront or cancel the services they receive.
Barriers to intervention: Social service and child advocacy agencies may be aware that a disabled child is the victim of violence or neglect, but choose to keep that child in the household because there are few or no alternative foster care or safe, temporary residential care facilities that are disability accessible or willing to take in a disabled child The response of disabled children themselves to on-going violence within the home is dictated by a number of factors. They may be:
• Unaware that the abuse and neglect is unacceptable – in part because unlike the non-disabled child, they have little contact with others outside the household.
• Be aware that this type of behavior is unacceptable, but be unable to physically contact or communicate with individuals outside the household who could help them
• Be aware that this type of behavior is unacceptable, but fear loss of relationship with care giver or family member. While this is an issue for many children in violent households, for disabled children dependent on their abusers for physical care, communication with the outside world or other disability-specific concerns, these issues are more complex.
• Be aware that this type of behavior is unacceptable, seek to alert authorities, but are not listened to or believed.
Violence in Educational and Custodial Settings
Millions of disabled children around the world spend part or all of their lives in institutional settings, be it in schools within their communities, disability-related residential schools, institutions or hospitals, or in the criminal justice system. In all cases, being disabled increases and compounds their risk for becoming victims of violence.
Non-residential schools: Sadly, victimization of disabled children in school can begin even before the child enters the schoolhouse door:
• Traveling to and from school: Because educational facilities for disabled children are rare, many children travel long distances to school. Reports of physical and sexual abuse by those responsible for transportation to and from school are common. For example, a recent study in the United States reported that 5% of all disabled students reporting sexual abuse were abused by bus drivers on their way to or from their schools. (7)
• Physical threat of violence: Disabled children are often bullied, teased or subjected to physical violence (being beaten, stoned, spit upon, etc.) by members of the community on their way to and from school
• Victims of crime: Disabled children are often targeted by predators on their way to and from school. For example, perpetrators of violent crimes, including robbery and rape, often target students on their way to schools for the disabled, believing them to be more vulnerable and less likely or able to report crime or abuse. Students with sensory impairments (deafness or blindness) and students with intellectual disabilities seem to be at particular risk.
Violence Inside the Classroom
• Teachers: Disabled children are often beaten, abused or bullied by teachers, particularly untrained teachers who do not understand the limitations of some disabled children. Children with intellectual disabilities and children with hearing impairments are particularly at risk, but reports worldwide find that all disabled children are potential victims. Sexual abuse by teachers is also widely reported for both male and female students.
• Fellow students: Teachers that humiliate, bully or beat children not only directly cause harm to the child, but model such behavior for other children in their classroom, who may follow the teacher’s lead in physically harming, bullying and socially isolating the targeted disabled child. Sexual abuse by fellow students is also a concern and is often linked to physical violence and bullying behaviors by such classmates.
• School staff: Individuals who work as teacher’s aides or attendants for disabled children, or help transport, feed or care for such children, are often underpaid, overworked and largely unsupervised. While many who undertake such career choices do so out of the best of motives, others choose these jobs because it allows easy access to the most vulnerable of children. A study from the US, found that 11% of all those working as teachers’ aides, transportation staff or school janitorial staff in programs that served disabled children had previous criminal records, many related to child abuse or sexual abuse.
• Lack of reporting mechanism: Few schools have mechanisms in place that allow students, parents or caregivers to complain about violence or victimization. This is all the more serious because in many communities there are only a handful of schools or educational programs that are available for disabled children. Parents/caregivers or children may hesitate to complain about violent or abusive behavior in the school, fearing that they will be dismissed from a program when no alternative exists. Of equal concern, few schools have systems in place to allow school staff to report abuse they have observed on the job.
• Violence in Residential schools: In a number of countries, children with specific types of disabilities, (particularly children who are deaf, blind or intellectual impaired) are educated in residential schools, where they may live away from their families for months or years. In addition to the potential for victimization noted above for disabled children in the classroom, additional concerns for violence against disabled children must be noted for residential schools:
• Housing at residential schools: Children who live in dormitories or are boarded out with local families are often subject to both physical violence and sexual abuse.
Institutions
In many countries, disabled children are placed in institutions at birth or as toddlers and remain there until death. It is important to note that while institutions continue to be considered the norm for disabled children in many countries, in fact, until two hundred years ago, few institutions existed. Prior to the establishment of institutions, it was expected that disabled children would remain with their families, living in the community throughout their lifespan. In recent years, a growing number of Disability Rights advocates as well as human rights advocates and experts in law, pediatrics, public health and rehabilitation have called for the closing of institutions for disabled children and a return to community-based living. Certainly all available data show that children in institutions do far worse socially, educationally, medically and psychologically than children raised in supportive community settings. While institutionalization itself can have serious physical and psychological effects on children, violence against disabled children in institutions is of grave concern – and particularly widespread. Globally, the following issues appear with frequency:
Victims of violence: Disabled infants, children and adolescents in institutions around the world are routinely subjected to physical violence and sexual, verbal and emotional abuse by staff, visitors and fellow patients.
Profound neglect - (neglect to the point where it is life threatening): Disabled children are often kept in environments that can only be described as inhumane. Institutions for disabled children are often at the bottom of government priority lists and lack adequate funding, consistent support or oversight from government or civil society. Institutions are often overcrowded, unsanitary and suffer from lack of both staff and resources which leads directly to avoidable suffering and death. Among abuses reported within the past several years that should be noted in any discussion of violence against disabled children are:
Dangerous facilities that foster violence: In many institutions, infants, children and adolescents with disability are kept in overcrowded wards. These children have little or no physical contact with caretakers, lying for hours or days unchanged on urine soaked mattresses and suffering from undernourishment and malnutrition. They receive little or no stimulation in the form of individualized adult attention, toys or attempts at toilet training, self-care or education. Children who are considered demanding or troublesome may be inappropriately restrained - chained to their beds, straight jacketed, have plastic soda bottles taped over their hands, beaten or medicated so they do not disturb the staff. Accounts of disabled children being placed in cages, cells or pits come from institutions around the world.
Such conditions are not only inhumane in themselves but are also an invitation to further violence: reports of physical violence and sexual, verbal and emotional abuse by staff, visitors and other patients in these facilities come from institutions on every continent. A Human Rights Watch Report found the death rate among institutionalized disabled children in several countries in Eastern Europe was almost twice that for children in the general population and for disabled children who are kept at home; in Chinese orphanages, where a significant proportion of all admitted children are disabled, the mortality rates in some institutions over the life of the children in their care, exceeds 75%.
This report presents the findings of the Thematic Group on Violence against Disabled Children, convened by UNICEF at UN Headquarters in New York providing comments and recommendations on violence against disabled children to be made available for the UN Secretary General’s Report on Violence against Children.
In this report, key issues on violence against children with disabilities will be reviewed. Some of the issues raised will be familiar to those who work on violence against children. Other issues will be disability-specific and even experts and advocates on violence against children may be unfamiliar with them or have not thought deeply about the implications that such practices have in relation to violence against and abuse of disabled children.
It is important to note that the factors that place disabled children at increased risk for abuse are often related to social, cultural and economic issues, and not to the actual disability itself. As such, interventions that address violence and abuse against disabled children can and should be effective if implemented with concern and resolve.
It should be noted at the outset that:
• The number of children and adolescents with disability are significant. While calculations vary depending on the specific definition of disability, using the World Health Organization’s definition of individuals with a disability as individuals having a physical, sensory (deafness, blindness), intellectual or mental health impairment, some 200 million children - 10% of the world’s young people – are born with a disability or become disabled before age 19.
• Disabled children must be included in all programs intended to end violence towards and abuse of children. Disabled children cannot wait until issues of violence and abuse are fully addressed in non-disabled children. The reasons for this are two-fold: 1) the lives of disabled children are no less valuable than the lives of all other children and the short- and long-term consequences of violence and abuse for them are no less severe; and 2) violence against children as a global problem will not be solved unless violence against the world’s million of disabled children is included as part of the overall solution.
Background
According to researchers, children with physical, sensory, intellectual or mental health impairment are at increased risk of becoming victims of violence. While the amount of research available on this population is extremely limited, particularly for disabled children in the developing world, current research indicates that violence against disabled children occurs at annual rates at least 1.7 times greater than their non-disabled peers. (1) More targeted studies also indicate reasons for serious concern. For example, one group of researchers report that 90% of individuals with intellectual impairments will experience sexual abuse at some point in the life, and a national survey of deaf adults in Norway found 80% of all deaf individuals surveyed report sexual abuse at some point in their childhood.
The specific type and amount of violence against disabled children will vary depending upon whether it occurs within the family, in the community, in institutional settings or in the work place.(4) There are however, several key issues that appear time and again when such violence occurs. Most striking is the issue of reoccurring stigma and prejudice. Throughout history many – although not all – societies have dealt poorly with disability. Cultural, religious and popular social beliefs often assume that a child is born with a disability or becomes disabled after birth as the result of a curse, ‘bad blood’, an incestuous relationships, a sin committed in a previous incarnation or a sin committed by that child’s parents or other family members.
A child born in a community where such beliefs exist is at risk in a number of ways. A child born with a disability or a child who becomes disabled may be directly subject to physical violence, or sexual, emotional or verbal abuse in the home, the community, institutional settings or in the workplace. A disabled child is more likely to face violence and abuse at birth and this increased risk for violence reappears throughout the life span. This violence compounds already existing social, educational and economic marginalization that limits the lives and opportunities of these children. For example, disabled children are far less likely than their non-disabled peers to be included in the social, economic and cultural life of their communities; only a small percentage of these children will ever attend school; a third of all street children are disabled children. Disabled children living in remote and rural areas may be at increased risk.
Settings
Violence in the home and family: In societies where there is stigma against those with disability, research indicates that some parents respond with violence because of the shame the child had brought on the family or respond with violence because a lack of social support leads to intense stress within the family. Among the violent manifestations of this are:
Infanticide & mercy killings: Disabled children may be killed either immediately at birth or at some point after birth; and sometimes years after birth. The rational for such killings is either 1) the belief that the child is evil or will bring misfortunate to the family or the community or 2) the belief that the child is suffering or will suffer and is better off dead. Often called “mercy killings” such murders are usually a response to societal beliefs about disability and lack of social support systems for individuals with disability and their family, not the actual physical condition of the child him or herself. In ‘mercy killings’ a parent or caretaker justifies withholding basic life sustaining supports (usually food, water and/or medication) or actively takes the child’s life through suffocation, strangulation or some other means, with the intention of “ending suffering.”
What links such behaviors together is that the cause of death is not the child’s disability, but actions taken on the part of the child’s parent or caretaker. Importantly, the actions of the parent or caretaker are often not taken in isolation. The decision to end the life of a disabled child may be prompted either directly with advice and counsel of medical, social, and religious leaders or family members. It may be prompted indirectly through lack of social, economic and medical support networks that leave parents feeling isolated, depressed and desperate. Cases where parents decide to end the life of a disabled child because they themselves are ill or aging and fear their child will be subjected to abuse or neglect after their own deaths are particularly heartrending. That communities often do not prosecute such forms of homicide or let the perpetrator go with a reduced punishment is recognition from the surrounding society of the lack of support and encouragement given to caring for and raising a disabled child. Importantly, in some societies, there are also often gender differences, with disabled girl infants and girl children more likely to die through ‘mercy killings’ than are boy children of the same age with comparable disabling conditions.
Physical violence, sexual, emotional and/or verbal abuse of the disabled child in a violent household: While many parents are violent towards children where no disability exists, when a disabled child lives in a violent setting his or her disability often serves to compound and intensify the nature and extent of the abuse. For example, a mobility impaired child may be less able to flee when physically or sexually assaulted. A child who is deaf may be unable to communicate about the abuse he or she faces to anyone outside his or her household, unless these outsiders speak sign language or understand the home signs the child uses. (And when the abuser is the one interpreting the child’s statement to someone outside the household, this further limits the child’s ability to report abuse or ask for help). A child who is intellectually impaired may not be savvy enough to anticipate a parent’s growing anger or know when to leave the room to avoid being struck.
Theory of child induced stress leading to violence: Several theories of child abuse state that a disabled child faces increased risk as the result of child-produced stress. It is hypothesized that this cycle of increasing tensions can begin long before the child is diagnosed as having a disability. For example, a child with a hearing impairment may be regarded as disobedient; a child with vision problems may not make eye contact and appear to be unresponsive, a child with a neurological disorder may be difficult to comfort or feed. Other researchers suggest that parents who become violent towards their disabled child are reacting not to the child’s condition alone, but to the social isolation and stigma they encounter from surrounding family, friends and neighbors. Parents of disabled children often lack social supports as family and friends distance themselves; they can find no school willing to take their child or they live in communities where there are few or no social services to help them with their child’s needs. It is possible that both child-produced stressors and social isolation are compounded to produce a stressful and potentially violent situation in a household coping with a disabled child. It is also true that not all households with disabled children are violent and even within the same communities there are coping mechanisms in some families that prevent violence, while children with identical disabilities in other households are subjected to violence. As with many aspects of violence towards disabled children, at this point, much more research is needed to allow us to adequately understand the factors that inhibit or foster violence towards these children.
Neglect as a precursor to violence: Parents may respond to the stress of caring for a disabled child with neglect rather than active violence, however when this neglect involves denial of food, medicine and other life sustaining services, it must be considered a form of violence. For example:
Neglect in providing basic/life sustaining care: The disabled child in a household may receive less food, medical care or other services. This can be subtle, for example, parents or caretakers may wait a few additional days before spending scarce money for medicine or the child may receive less food or less nutritious food than his or her sibling. The response can also be direct: refusal to continue to feed, house or cloth a child after he or she has been disabled. Such neglect can lead to further impairments in a vicious feedback feed back cycle in which the disabled child continually loses ground developmentally.
Neglect to provide disability-specific care: Disability-specific health concerns are exacerbated through neglect. For example, bed sores go unattended resulting in a potentially deadly systemic infection or a disabled child who needs assistance eating will become malnourished because no one takes enough time to adequately feed him or her.
Refusal to intervene: Family, neighbors, health care professionals or social service experts may be aware that a disabled child is being abused by parents or caretakers in the home, but are unwilling to intervene, rationalizing such violence by citing stress on parents or lack of alternative care arrangements. While deciding when to intervene to stop violence against children in the home is an issue in many societies, the neglect highlighted here is when a community does not stop violence against a disabled child that would be considered intolerable if perpetrated against a non-disabled child.
Gender specific neglect: Such neglect may be further exacerbated by gender – for example, in a study from Nepal, the survival rate for boy children several years after they have had polio is twice that for girl children, despite the fact that polio itself affects equal numbers of males and females. Neglect, in the form of the lack of adequate medical care, less nutritious food or lack of access to related resources, is the apparent cause of these deaths.
Violence and abuse linked to social isolation.
Child is shunned within the household, with few family members talking to him or her or overseeing his or her safety
The child is not allowed to leave the house or household compound. In some cases, the child is kept home to ensure his or her own safety, as parents fear that the child may be struck by a cart or abused by someone in the neighborhood. But in many other instances a child is kept isolated because the family fears the reaction from other members of the community. Children in some communities are kept shackled in windowless storerooms, hot household courtyards or dark attics for weeks, months or years, often with little or no interaction, even by those within the household. Next door neighbors may not know of the child’s existence and family members across town may be told that the child has long since died.
Abuse by support staff within the home – Parents and caretakers of disabled children must often call upon informal networks of family, friends and neighbors or formal networks of in-home nursing and attendant care to help with child care, rehabilitative or medical support.
In such instances: Physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse may take place by caregivers without the parent’s knowledge or while the parent is away.
Parents may be aware of or suspect abuse, but feel there are no alternatives to help with the care of the disabled child and thus be unwilling to admit, confront or cancel the services they receive.
Barriers to intervention: Social service and child advocacy agencies may be aware that a disabled child is the victim of violence or neglect, but choose to keep that child in the household because there are few or no alternative foster care or safe, temporary residential care facilities that are disability accessible or willing to take in a disabled child The response of disabled children themselves to on-going violence within the home is dictated by a number of factors. They may be:
• Unaware that the abuse and neglect is unacceptable – in part because unlike the non-disabled child, they have little contact with others outside the household.
• Be aware that this type of behavior is unacceptable, but be unable to physically contact or communicate with individuals outside the household who could help them
• Be aware that this type of behavior is unacceptable, but fear loss of relationship with care giver or family member. While this is an issue for many children in violent households, for disabled children dependent on their abusers for physical care, communication with the outside world or other disability-specific concerns, these issues are more complex.
• Be aware that this type of behavior is unacceptable, seek to alert authorities, but are not listened to or believed.
Violence in Educational and Custodial Settings
Millions of disabled children around the world spend part or all of their lives in institutional settings, be it in schools within their communities, disability-related residential schools, institutions or hospitals, or in the criminal justice system. In all cases, being disabled increases and compounds their risk for becoming victims of violence.
Non-residential schools: Sadly, victimization of disabled children in school can begin even before the child enters the schoolhouse door:
• Traveling to and from school: Because educational facilities for disabled children are rare, many children travel long distances to school. Reports of physical and sexual abuse by those responsible for transportation to and from school are common. For example, a recent study in the United States reported that 5% of all disabled students reporting sexual abuse were abused by bus drivers on their way to or from their schools. (7)
• Physical threat of violence: Disabled children are often bullied, teased or subjected to physical violence (being beaten, stoned, spit upon, etc.) by members of the community on their way to and from school
• Victims of crime: Disabled children are often targeted by predators on their way to and from school. For example, perpetrators of violent crimes, including robbery and rape, often target students on their way to schools for the disabled, believing them to be more vulnerable and less likely or able to report crime or abuse. Students with sensory impairments (deafness or blindness) and students with intellectual disabilities seem to be at particular risk.
Violence Inside the Classroom
• Teachers: Disabled children are often beaten, abused or bullied by teachers, particularly untrained teachers who do not understand the limitations of some disabled children. Children with intellectual disabilities and children with hearing impairments are particularly at risk, but reports worldwide find that all disabled children are potential victims. Sexual abuse by teachers is also widely reported for both male and female students.
• Fellow students: Teachers that humiliate, bully or beat children not only directly cause harm to the child, but model such behavior for other children in their classroom, who may follow the teacher’s lead in physically harming, bullying and socially isolating the targeted disabled child. Sexual abuse by fellow students is also a concern and is often linked to physical violence and bullying behaviors by such classmates.
• School staff: Individuals who work as teacher’s aides or attendants for disabled children, or help transport, feed or care for such children, are often underpaid, overworked and largely unsupervised. While many who undertake such career choices do so out of the best of motives, others choose these jobs because it allows easy access to the most vulnerable of children. A study from the US, found that 11% of all those working as teachers’ aides, transportation staff or school janitorial staff in programs that served disabled children had previous criminal records, many related to child abuse or sexual abuse.
• Lack of reporting mechanism: Few schools have mechanisms in place that allow students, parents or caregivers to complain about violence or victimization. This is all the more serious because in many communities there are only a handful of schools or educational programs that are available for disabled children. Parents/caregivers or children may hesitate to complain about violent or abusive behavior in the school, fearing that they will be dismissed from a program when no alternative exists. Of equal concern, few schools have systems in place to allow school staff to report abuse they have observed on the job.
• Violence in Residential schools: In a number of countries, children with specific types of disabilities, (particularly children who are deaf, blind or intellectual impaired) are educated in residential schools, where they may live away from their families for months or years. In addition to the potential for victimization noted above for disabled children in the classroom, additional concerns for violence against disabled children must be noted for residential schools:
• Housing at residential schools: Children who live in dormitories or are boarded out with local families are often subject to both physical violence and sexual abuse.
Institutions
In many countries, disabled children are placed in institutions at birth or as toddlers and remain there until death. It is important to note that while institutions continue to be considered the norm for disabled children in many countries, in fact, until two hundred years ago, few institutions existed. Prior to the establishment of institutions, it was expected that disabled children would remain with their families, living in the community throughout their lifespan. In recent years, a growing number of Disability Rights advocates as well as human rights advocates and experts in law, pediatrics, public health and rehabilitation have called for the closing of institutions for disabled children and a return to community-based living. Certainly all available data show that children in institutions do far worse socially, educationally, medically and psychologically than children raised in supportive community settings. While institutionalization itself can have serious physical and psychological effects on children, violence against disabled children in institutions is of grave concern – and particularly widespread. Globally, the following issues appear with frequency:
Victims of violence: Disabled infants, children and adolescents in institutions around the world are routinely subjected to physical violence and sexual, verbal and emotional abuse by staff, visitors and fellow patients.
Profound neglect - (neglect to the point where it is life threatening): Disabled children are often kept in environments that can only be described as inhumane. Institutions for disabled children are often at the bottom of government priority lists and lack adequate funding, consistent support or oversight from government or civil society. Institutions are often overcrowded, unsanitary and suffer from lack of both staff and resources which leads directly to avoidable suffering and death. Among abuses reported within the past several years that should be noted in any discussion of violence against disabled children are:
Dangerous facilities that foster violence: In many institutions, infants, children and adolescents with disability are kept in overcrowded wards. These children have little or no physical contact with caretakers, lying for hours or days unchanged on urine soaked mattresses and suffering from undernourishment and malnutrition. They receive little or no stimulation in the form of individualized adult attention, toys or attempts at toilet training, self-care or education. Children who are considered demanding or troublesome may be inappropriately restrained - chained to their beds, straight jacketed, have plastic soda bottles taped over their hands, beaten or medicated so they do not disturb the staff. Accounts of disabled children being placed in cages, cells or pits come from institutions around the world.
Such conditions are not only inhumane in themselves but are also an invitation to further violence: reports of physical violence and sexual, verbal and emotional abuse by staff, visitors and other patients in these facilities come from institutions on every continent. A Human Rights Watch Report found the death rate among institutionalized disabled children in several countries in Eastern Europe was almost twice that for children in the general population and for disabled children who are kept at home; in Chinese orphanages, where a significant proportion of all admitted children are disabled, the mortality rates in some institutions over the life of the children in their care, exceeds 75%.
| Violence Against Disabled Children |
| Page 1 of 3 Next Page |
| Page 1 of 3 Next Page |
| Page 1 of 3 Next Page |
 |  |  |  |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
| _____________________________________________________________________________________ |
______________________________________________________________________________________
| _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
| _____________________________________________________________ |
|
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
|
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
___________________________