I think they're focusing on the wrong problem here...

[mahogany]

I was reading this article on how mentally disabled people aren't really able to testify, and thus help prosecute their attackers, and all I can really think about is this line:

During their lifetimes, research suggests, 83 per cent of women with disabilities are sexually abused; 80 per cent of female psychiatric in-patients will be physically or sexually assaulted.


What??? How is it that this is still allowed to happen? What is someone with a mentally ill relative that is either a danger to herself or others supposed to do? Have her committed, so she can be raped? Clearly, we need female only hospitals staffed exclusively by females.

Evidence rules leave disabled Canadian girls open to sex abuse

Comments

[tatianne.livejournal.com]

I'm enrolling the boys in the local Catholic school this fall. I have to say when the principal told me that the school is all female staff except for the gym teacher, I was relieved. And that's with boys.

[nightynight.livejournal.com]

I am ALSO livid! This total crap and cannot be tolerated in a supposedly civilized society!

[garpu.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a gender issue, per se, but one of power/dominance. (Sexual assault is about power, not about lust.) In either case, abusers were attracted to easy prey. I think the question is really what can people do in order to better screen people working with people with disabilities or people with mental illnesses.

And sexual assault can happen between members of the same sex. Women can also assault men--Mary Kay Letourneau, anyone?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_yggdrasil/]

Hell, and even if you're abled and have the audacity to be a rape survivor, your testimony will be doubted, anyway.

[lavendersparkle.livejournal.com]

Dave Hingsburger does a lot of work in the area of abuse prevention for people with intellectual disabilities.

[joie-fatale.livejournal.com]

"Clearly, we need female only hospitals staffed exclusively by females."
I agree with you completely!!!

[tracied.livejournal.com]

And then we run into the whole problem of physical abuse at the hands of overworked and underpaid nurses. :( I agree with you, as long as said hospital has surveillance cameras in each room, which would probably be expensive. There really is no perfect system.