State 'failing' sexual violence victims

Ireland is not meeting the needs of survivors of sexual violence who also have a disability, Rape Crisis Network of Ireland executive director Fiona Neary said today.

She urged all those delivering services to people with disabilities to examine ways to provide a safe place for disclosure of sexual violence.

New research has confirmed that survivors of sexual violence with a disability were more likely to have been abused as adults than those without a disability. Almost half of the disabled survivors reporting sexual violence had a learning disability.

Four in 10 survivors with a disability were first subjected to sexual violence as adults compared with three in 10 survivors without a disability, the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland research has shown.

The study on sexual violence against people with disabilities compared information on 197 survivors with disabilities to 1,359 survivors without disabilities. The data is from survivors who attended 13 rape crisis centres in the State between 2008 and 2010.

Survivors with disabilities had a lower incidence of sexual violence only in childhood (48 per cent) than those without a disability (61 per cent), the study found. One-tenth of all victims disclosed sexual violence both in childhood and adulthood.

Survivors with disabilities were more likely to have been victims of different perpetrators in multiple incidents (25 per cent) than those without disability (39 per cent), the study found.

This is in line with international findings that people with learning disabilities were more vulnerable to sexual violence than people with other disabilities.

The study also included an online survey of 137 people with disabilities. Seven in 10 said they had never been asked if they had experienced sexual violence.

Half of all survivors with a disability would not disclose sexual violence for fear of being blamed or not believed or for fear of the abuser or legal process.