11 November 2009 -Cornwall, England, United Kingdom Mary Fox, 59, died in house fire last week a few minutes after helping her 17-year-old son Raum escape from an upstairs window. According to a number of sources Raum had learning difficulties or mild intellectual disabilities and was a target of frequent bullying. whether the incident of Bonfire Night was related to this bullying remains a matter of speculation. What is known is someone put a lit piece of fireworks trough the mailslot of Fox’s home that started the deadly blaze, and mother and son were trapped on the upper floor.In an act of heroism, the mother helped her son out the window before she succumbed. According to the BBC, three teenagers are now in custody.

13 November 2009 – Lincoln, NE, USA A man has been charged with using a shock collar used to train dogs on a young man with cerebral palsy. An employee of the assisted living facility where the young man lives, said that the victim ran screaming from his room during a visit from Scott Gale, 26, who is an employee of Integrated Life Choices, the organization that runs the assisted living facility. Gale had his dog with him. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, the young victim had two red marks on his elbow that appeared to match up with the electrodes on the shock collar that was found at the scene. Gale was charged and released by police and has been suspended by his employer.

7 November 2009 – Madison, WI, USA Darell Bracey, Sr., 51, has been charged with 2 counts of second degree sexual assault. The alleged victim is 50-year-old woman who has been described as having cerebral palsy, mild intellectual disabilities, and epilepsy. According to the story in the Wisconsin State Journal, Bracey denies taking the woman to his home, where she claims she was sexually assaulted, but she has provided a description of Bracey’s home. Bracey is described in the story as having a felony record.

7 November 2009 – New Brighton, New Zealand Someone came into the home of eight-year-old boy who has severe cerebral palsy and stole his communication device from him, while he was using it.

According to a New Zealand Police press release:

Acting Sergeant Ed Landstra of New Brighton says it was a despicable thing to do and asks whoever has it leave it somewhere safe so it can be recovered and returned to Caleb without damage.

“Please leave it anonymously at a reception at a school, Police, or the Library so we can get it back and working to Caleb as soon as possible.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact New Brighton Police phone 373 9100.

5 November 2009 – Los Angeles, CA, USA In 1997, Shawn Boehm, 23, who was described as having a mental disability, and his mother Nancy, 57, were stabbed to death in their Hollywood home. The crime went unsolved for more than a decade. Now, the Los Angeles Police Department says that they have a suspect, identified as 37-year-old Rafael Martinez. Martinez, who is currently serving a prison sentence for the 2001 stabbing murder of another woman in the area of the city. According to an Associated Press story in the Mercury News, DNA recovered from under the mother’s fingernails matches Martinez.

4 November 2009 – Reno, Nevada, USA Richard Bunch, a 51-year-old trucker has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of luring a 13-year-old girl described as mentally disabled into his truck and sexually assaulting her. The offense took place in July 2008, and Bunch entered guilty plea, which he later attempted to withdraw.The Associated Press report carried by KOMOnews.com indicates that Bunch is suspected of two other sexual assaults that took place in 2008, including one against a 9-year-old girl.

4 November 2009 -London, England, UK According to a 2009 survey of 1253 respondents conducted by the Leonard Cheshire Disability Trust, 9% of people with disabilities in the United Kingdom report having been the victim of a disability bias crime. The survey asked people if they had experienced a crime that they believed was motivated by their disability. In all 12% of respondents indicated that they had been crime victims in the past year.

As reported by Peter Walker in The Guardian, this was the first year the survey included this question:

The charity said it had included the question after high-profile incidents in which disabled people had been targeted, notably the case of Fiona Pilkington and her 18-year-old daughter, Francecca. In September, an inquest jury criticised police and a council in Leicestershire for failing to help Pilkington after her family suffered years of abuse from gangs of youths. Pilkington killed herself and Francecca by setting the family car alight in a layby near their home.

8 August 2008 – Rutgers, NJ, USA Here is an inetresting video on violence against women with disabilities with Yolanda Muñoz from the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership.

This youtube video is 4 minutes 30 seconds long.

26 October 2009- Brampton, ON, Canada Seow Cheng Sim, 51, was arrested in connection with the death of her 15-year-old son Tony Khor, who had autism. According to reports, the mother took her son to a hotel after an argument with her husband. The son was later found dead in the hotel room and the mother was taken into custody. The mother has been charged with first degree murder. Video is available on the CTV.ca Toronto website.

26 October 2009 – Alton, IL, USA Michelle Riley, 37, entered a guilty plea to a charge of first degree murder in the torture killing of Dorothy Dixon in January of 2008. Dixon, 29, was pregant at the time of her murder. Her death resulted from multiple injuries. She was beaten with the handle of a plunger, scalded, burned with a hot glue gun, and used as target for a BB pistol. Riley’s 14-year-old son was given probation in the case and four others who were allegedly involved in the torture of Dorothy Dixon are awaiting trial.

Dorothy Dixon had a developmental disability and received social security cheques. She was banished to the basement while Riley and others spent her social security benefit. According to the Associated Press, no sentencing date has been set for Riley, but she is expected tobe sentenced to between 30 and 45 years in prison. Her body was discovered on January 31, 2008.

Show & Tell: Recent News from Special Education

4 October 2009 – Everett, WA, USA Derrick Everson, 21,  was murdered.  His brain, heart and other vital organs were all pierced by some of the 25 different stab wounds. The Snohomish County HeraldNet reported:

He had struggled in special education classes during his school years and didn’t graduate from high school. Sometimes he was teased, his grandma said.

6 October 2008 – Chicago, IL, USA An analysis of the Chicago school shootings over the past five years indicated that the highest risk high school students have about a 20% chance of being shot in the next two years. As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

The most at-risk students have poor academic performance, miss more days of school and are more likely to be homeless and in special-education programs than other students, according to the report.

7 October 2009 – Dolton, IL, USA CBS News 2 Chicago.com broadcast security video of a police officer assigned to a special needs school beating a 15-year-old school in an apparently unprovoked attack, allegedly because the students shirt was not tucked in. The 15-year-old was a special education student who had previous brain injuAfter pushing the student down, and punching him, the officer than uses the face-down takedown technique that has been has been implicated in at least 20 deaths according to Government Accounting Office report. Watch this video and decide for yourself whether this force could be justified.

7 October 2009 – Miami Lakes, FL, USA A special ed teacher was sentenced to two-yearsprobation and 100 hours of community service after being convicted of abuse for giving a student who had autism a soda that she had loaded with hot sauce, according to CBS4.com.

7 October 2009- Ontario, Canada Augmentative Communication Community Partnerships CANADA (ACCPC) and Justice Canada have teamed up to produce a great new resource on the use of alternative forms of communication in the courts. While this resource is was created specifically for the Canadian context, it has a huge amount of valuable information that can be applied anywhere. and in particular some great videos on the topic.

The Access to Justice website Communication Access to the Legal Community is very professionally organized and fast enough to make the streaming video a pleasure rather than a chore. View the slide show for a great mini-course on alternative communications in the courts. You’ll find links to a number of other valuable resources along the way.

This resource is highly recommended for teaching judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and everyone else involved, about how people with disabilities can be accommodated in legal proceedings. Thank you, ACCPC, for a valuable resource.

3 October 2009 – Edmonton, AB, Canada Here are some recent stories about violent crimes against people with cerebral palsy.

9 September 2009 -Chester, North Wales, United Kingdom The Daily Post comments on a fatality review that looked into the murder of Naomi Hill, who was droned by her mother. The review found that there was little that healthor social services could have done to prevent this murder, but that there were improvements taht should be made in the coordination of services.

15 September 2009 – Detroit, MI, USA As reported  in the Fairfax Times, Lorenc Babu, submitted a guilty plea to a charge of premeditated murder of Rebekah Seely, 30, who had cerebral palsy. She was beaten with a tire iron before being thrown into a pond to die.

22 September 2009 – Coventry, England, UK As reported in the Coventry Telegraph, Jeremy Lewis, 46, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 17 years served before parole for stabbing Bernard Ryan, 43,  to death. Ryan was a wheelchair user who had cerebral palsy.

22 September 2009 – Exeter, England, UK As reported in the Mirror, James Watts, 57, a driver and caregiver for a ‘care home’ is on trial for sexually assaulting for women who lived in the home. Three of the four alleged victims have cerebral palsy.

25 September 2009 – Tavernier, FL, USA An arrest warrant was issued for Rafael Castellanos, 66, alleging 11 counts of sexual assault on a victim under 12 and 3 counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 12, according to KeysNet. The attacks were alleged to have been perpetrated against a girl with cerebral palsy beginning when she was 10-years-old. Castellanos, was the boyfriend of a family member and sometimes took care of the girl when the mother was away.

29 September 2009 – Bradford, England, UK As reported in the Telegraph and Argus, three teens were admitted to assaulting and attempting to rob a 22-year-old man with cerebral palsy, among several muggings they had committed.

2 October 2009 – River Haven, IN, USA According to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, two adults, Christopher Lynn Ramsey, 18, and William Otis Gresham, 21, have been charged with  with rape and criminal deviate conduct, and charges are being considered against two juveniles in the  same case. It is alleged that these indiviuals committed forcible rape causing injury of a woman who has cerebral palsy, uses a walker, and also has cognitive disabilities.

1 October 2009 – Washington, DC, USA The US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, today released its long-awaited Crime Against People with Disabilities, 2007 report, authored by Michael Rand and Erika Harrell.  This report is based on data collected in the National Crime Victimization Study.  It is an impressive piece of work. Here is a very brief summary of its findings.

In 2007, Americans with disabilities, age 12 or older, were victims of 716,000 violent crimes in addition to 2,300,000 property crimes.

The violent crimes included 47,000 rapes, 79,000 robberies, 114,000 aggravated assaults, and 476,000 simple assaults.

Overall, the rate of violent crime against people with disabilities was 1.5 times the rate for people without disabilities.

The rate of rapes or sexual assaults against people with disabilities was more than twice the rate for people without disabilities.

Although males had a higher rate of violent-crime victimization than females  among those without disabilities, females with disabilities had a higher rate than males with disabilities.

Females with disabilities were 1.8 times as likely as other females to be victims of violence.

Among all the disability groups considered, individuals with cognitive disabilities had a much higher rate of victimization than those with other disabilities.

Many (56%) of the people with disabilities who were crime victims had multiple disabilities.

Among people with disabilities who were victims of crime, 19% believed that they were targeted because of their disabilities and another 2% indicated that they didn’t know if they were targeted because of their disabilities or not.

Bureau of Justice Statistics Press Release

Download PDF of 12 page Report (474K)

National Public Radio Coverage (Links to icad blog, so it must be good)

CNN Coverage

October 2009, NCJ 227814

27 September 2009 – Edmonton, Alberta, Canada The Edmonton Police Homicide Squad is investigating the deaths of a father,39,  and son, 11, in the father’s Northside home. The son is described as “autistic” and living in a group home. Police have released few details, except to say that they are not seeking any suspects at this time, and they are awaiting the medical examiner’s report on the cause and manner of death. A neighbor, quoted in an iNews 880AM report implies that this was a case of murder-suicide:

Pat Doren and her husband Ron live next door. Detectives told them the man and the young autistic son were found dead inside the home. She spoke about the relationship between the father and son. “I know the father was very compassionate to the son. He’d go and visit him during the week.”

Doren says the news has hit them hard, “The feeling of sadness comes right away. You hate to see anything like this happen. You don’t know what’s led them to this situation. They were good people, and a good family.”

Names have not been released pending notification of family members.

see additional stories in the

Edmonton Sun

Calgary CTV Includes news video.