I first wrote this essay for a feminist forum, so it slants towards women; however, I modified much of what I wrote because as we all know, women are not the only ones who experience domestic violence.
People with disabilities who experience domestic violence often have a harder time escaping the situation than other people. Things such as lack of financial resources can make it just about impossible for people with disabilities to get out a bad situation. In the US, if you collect disability benefits from the government, you are not allowed to save much money. That is, if your savings or checking account goes over a certain amount, your benefits will start to get docked. If you hide the money somehow and they find out about it, you will be forced to repay it through reduced benefits, and they may prosecute.
So - no money, no work. It is very difficult for PWD to get jobs, because people don’t want to deal with someone who might get sick or need to take “health” days, they don’t want to deal with making the workplace accessible, and they are afraid of being sued for one thing or another. And besides, some of us look funny and might scare away customers. Add to this being out of the workforce for years, and job prospects become just about zero.
Having a disability is hard enough on one’s self esteem; PWDs who are also abused may have a self esteem that is almost completely crushed and dead. Therefore, it may take longer for them to extricate themselves from an abusive situation, or to even recognize that they are in one. This needs to be understood by counselors and domestic violence workers so that they understand that a disabled victim may take a relatively long time to seek change; this may be hard for some workers (and friends) to handle since they see PWDs at a higher risk of injury, and they may want to get them out of the abusive situation right away.
It’s not easy for many PWDs to physically escape the home. Many shelters are not accessible - and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the place has stairs. Accessible also means things like having a big bathroom for one to move around in, grab bars in the shower and by the toilet, a special bench used in the shower - that’s what I’d need, anyway, and more. I’d also absolutely need catheters so that I could empty my bladder. And the bed would have to be high enough so that I could enter and exit by myself. All these things would work for me, a woman with paraplegia, but what about other disabilities? Many people would need someone to help them dress, help them with medications, with cleaning, feeding, and other daily tasks. Oh, and I almost forgot one of the most important things: transportation. If I can’t get to the shelter, if it‘s not on a bus line, I cannot use the services. Period. What options does a person with these needs have when it comes to escaping domestic violence? It’s not a pretty thing to think about.
Here are some facets of domestic violence that people with disabilities may face (and remember domestic violence can come from caregivers too, not just partners):
-withholding of food/water
-refusing to clean the person, or using water that is too hot or too cold and causes pain
-moving furniture around to make it hard or impossible for them to move around
-deliberately causing pain during physical exercises
-withholding medications/administering wrong dosage
-withholding medical equipment (ex: hiding walkers, refusing to return blood sugar testers)
-taking away a guide dog
-humiliating and shaming because of disability, or disability needs (ex: making fun of uncontrollable gestures or drooling, shaming over bodily functions)
-harming of children or pets just because the PWD cannot protect them
-being very controlling and speaking for the PWD (“she‘s just fine“) even though the PWD is able to communicate themselves, which society accepts because they think none of us can speak for ourselves
-forced sterilizations and abortions
-inaccessible medical facilities from which to receive treatment for injuries (ex: most gynecological tables are not accessible)
-a legal system not set up for PWD (ex: often no interpreters for the deaf, inaccessible courtrooms, documents not in Braille)
-police not willing to do extensive investigations/searches for people with developmental disabilities
-institutions that do not protect people with developmental disabilities from peer violence (ex: not removing the offender or not offering safe space)
-discrimination against/ignorance of sexual preferences (PWD are seen as non-sexual, so sexual preferences and discriminations involved with them – such as homophobia -- are often ignored)
-social life of the PWD is usually restricted, leading to isolation
-due to this isolation and to social prejudices, PWD often have no experience in finding housing or employment, or learning about their own rights
-there is a fear of losing children, particularly among lesbians and women of color with disabilities
-under-reporting of abuse due to fear of deportation among refugees, perhaps back to a place where disability prejudice and inaccessibility is even worse
-Domestic violence itself can make a person disabled if the injuries are serious enough. (Do you now see the painful irony of shelters not being accessible? “We‘ll be here for you, as long as she doesn't beat you too badly.”)
-physically disabled women are about one and a half times more likely to be sexually abused as non-disabled women; cognitively disabled women are four to ten times more likely to experience sexual abuse; women with disabilities also endure abusive situations for longer (stats vary depending on where you look, these are averages; also we all know that much violence goes unreported)
When it comes to societal attitudes, you could say that society is the disabled one. Let’s put it this way: “[Society] is blind and deaf to both what happens that shouldn't and what doesn't happen that should, and it seems to be paralysed when it comes to making the changes necessary for women with disabilities to achieve their rights to access, choice, safety , power, work, health, family [and] home (NGO Forum, Beijing); and ignorance, neglect, superstition and fear are social factors that throughout the history of disability have isolated persons with disabilities” (United Nations 1994).
I wanted to end with a few ideas and things that may be new to some: “If myths…go unchallenged they are likely to perpetuate the beliefs that women with disabilities are unlikely to be in intimate, sexual relationships in the first place, let alone to have children. Popular belief would have it indeed that, if women with disabilities are in such relationships, they are likely to have made up stories about anything to do with victimisation because after all a bloke must be some sort of a saint to have taken on such a partner, so he's hardly likely to be an abuser, is he!” (Sceriha, 1996).
“[I]ndividualizing disability as personal tragedy, which happens all too often, shackles the individual up to emotional blocks which are cemented in place by pity and sentimentality. Women with disabilities are likely to experience these disabling influences from an early age and to gather along the way to adulthood the consequences of other oppressive influences rampant in our society like racism, homophobia, classism, and of course, sexism which cuts across all of these” (Chenoweth, 1996).
"Disabled people mainly live in a world which consists of 'Wait a minute,' and so their lives go by ignored, continually abused by those with power and who exert control" (Anne Macfarlane, 1994).