Question

What makes domestic and sexual violence against people with disabilities particularly challenging to combat? For example, can you identify additional vulnerabilities or barriers faced by people with disabilities?

Answer 1

• People with disabilities face a lot of barriers,majorly being whom to turn to for help. They consider themselves helpless and face problems in approaching people for help.
• Sometimes the centres made for help,do not have lifts which makes it difficult for the disable person on a wheelchair to reach for help. Sometimes they dont even have langauage interpretators that could help blind domestic/sexual violence victims fill up the paper work.
• Education is another barrier.People with disabilities and victims of domestic violence do not have any knowledge about their human rights or even women rights which makes them all the more helpless and suffer silently.
• Women and girls living with disabilities often face additional marginalization in their experiences of abuse as well as specific barriers to accessing services, due to economic and/or physical dependence on the abuser, which challenges efforts to escape.
• Biases among judicial personnel and courts, who may provide preferential treatment to the abuser in child custody due to the victim’s disability.
• Low sensitivity among law enforcement personnel or other service providers, who may not inquire about abuse by caretakers, or disregard reports from women with speech/communication or motor coordination disabilities (e.g. cerebral palsy), assuming they are intoxicated or are not serious in their .