Follow up to my last post

[mahogany]

In my last post, I was freaking out with outrage over the article that I read in the Vancouver Sun, which is a local newspaper.

The entire article had me up in arms, but the part that most upset me was:

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.

Before they turn 18, 40 to 70 per cent of girls with intellectual disabilities will be sexually exploited.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Evidence+rules+leave+disabled+Canadian+girls+open+abuse/4860978/story.html#ixzz1OSs2oJHE


I decided that I need to better educate myself on this issue. I emailed the reporter, and asked her where she obtained her statistics. She was very kind, promptly emailed me back. Her statistics came from a brief filed with the Supreme court of Canada. Here is a link to the document: http://leaf.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/2011-R.-vs.DI-Final-Factum.pdf

Here is how the original info reads:

80% of psychiatric inpatients have experienced physical or sexual abuse in their lifetime.


Does anyone else see a huge difference?

Comments

[garpu.livejournal.com]

It's still outrageous, but yeah. A verb tense changes a lot.

[mahogany.livejournal.com]

Yeah, still outrageous. I'm still ploughing through the links from blauetefelin and lavendersparkle, plus reading through some of the briefs on the LEAF website to try and get my mind around these issues.

[blaueteufelin.livejournal.com]

Just before the 80% stat in the LEAF report, it does say 83% of women with disabilities will be sexually abused in their lifetimes and 40-70% will be before the age of 18. Seems the journalist did report things slightly inaccurately, but not by much...

But yea, those numbers also suggest that a very high percentage of men with disabilities have been or will be assaulted at some point in their lives. This really is an issue of both ableism and misogyny.