Healing the Culture of Abuse

There is no audio on the video but none of the three police officers are seen making any attempt to assist the woman after she was pushed to the ground. According to the Canadian Press, the officer has apologized to the woman he pushed and remains on active duty while the incident is under investigation.

The rate of sexual abuse was even higher than 50% among children with intellectual disabilities. The victims of the abuse were 48% male and 52% female suggesting that the risk for boys is almost as high as the risk for girls.  According to the Bangladeshi The New Nation most (91%) of the offenders were family members but:

Even teachers and therapists were found to be guilty in many cases. Of the victims of sexual abuse, 52 percent were girls and 48 percent boys – aged between 7 and 18 years.

According to the study, the rate of sexual abuse is even worse in case of mentally disabled children (intellectually impaired) due to their inability to express themselves or understanding the intention of the offender.

The study recommends increasing self-protection ability of the children with disability as well as making the concept of sexual abuse clear through specially designed counseling.

It also recommended counseling for the family members on how to better handle the issue and

undertaking capacity building programmes for the NGO workers to address the problem.

Senior Researcher Dr Selim Chowdhury told UNB that parents of the victims are not willing to go for legal action as the disabled children cannot express them properly.

He stressed the need for involving physicians and psychologists to help realize the disable children’s body language in getting justice.

Dr Chowdhury, a psychologist, said: “We seem to have no concern about the sexuality of a disabled child. When a disabled child becomes adolescent, he or she has some biological needs. So, they should be trained in this regard.”

As reported in the Charlotte Observer:

Disability Rights N.C. gave health and human services administrators a written report of its own investigation of student complaints Monday, but had been talking to officials about problems at the school since early June. The report was about a handful of cases, but they show a pattern of staff and administrators’ failing to report and investigate, said Vicki Smith, executive director of Disability Rights.

“The appearance is that they were trying to cover it up,” Smith said.

How can these things happen? Many people have called for a public inquiry and changes to law or policy so that this kind of thing can never happen again. The allegations against her sister and brother-in-law remain to be tested in court, but, sadly, Betty Anne Gagnon’s story is far from unique. Vulnerable people people often are abused and neglected.

More than a century ago reformer Dorthea Dix argued eloquently against very similar abuses of vulnerable people abused and neglected by caregivers and called for government run asylums to protect them from abuse. Her advocacy led to the rapid growth of state and provincial institutions for people with mental health and developmental disabilities. Unfortunately, these institutions did nothing to protect vulnerable people. In fact, from the earliest days these institutions became the sites for massive abuse and neglect. While everything we know about child abuse and domestic violence tells us that families CAN be dangerous places where cruelty prevails, families remain the best alternative that we have for providing decent care for vulnerable people.

Would a comprehensive system of adult protective services, like those that exist in most US states have prevented this death? Perhaps. Alberta does have a Protection for Persons in Care Act to address abuse in nursing homes and institutions, but it does not address family care. A more comprehensive Adult Protection Act would result in identification of some abuse and neglect problems at earlier stages, but these systems are far from perfect. Just as child protective services have fallen far short of eliminating child abuse, adult protective services have never come close to eliminating the maltreatment of vulnerable adults. In fact, based on the information available, it is unlikely that such a system would have saved Betty Anne Gagnon, because these systems rely on reports of abuse or neglect and when people are isolated reports are unlikely.

Personally, I have spent I have spent the last 25 years studying violence against people with disabilities and I can tell you with certainty that there are more people like Betty Anne Gagnon being abused and neglected in Alberta and pretty much everywhere else. Most of this maltreatment will never be reported or disclosed. Periodically, another case will grab public attention briefly.

There are things that we can do that will help, but no solution is perfect, and we need to be careful not to do more harm than good.  Taking away people’s freedom in the name of protecting them or making life harder for good families and good caregivers just to say that we are doing something are just some of the ways that we might do more harm than good.

So, let’s think carefully before we react. Its not so easy to legislate human decency.

Stott and Hernandez had befriended Holley before the murder. According to one investigator, Holley was likely killed for his X-Box video game console. Holley was attending Pikes Peak Community College on a part-time basis with support because of his intellectual disability. For more information and video, see kktv.com. The trial for Hernandez is expected to be held this fall.

Smiling Xuan Peng

16 June 2010 – Toronto, ON, Canada A smiling Xuan (AKA Linda) Peng walked free after being convicted of manslaughter and being sentenced to time served for the drowning of her  four-year-old daughter, Scarlett Cheng. Xuan Peng had originally  claimed that the drowning of her daughter was accidental, saying that she had put the girl to bed and found her an hour later dead in the bathtub. Forensic evidence, however, indicated the girl had been forcefully held underwater. Nevertheless, after winning a new trial because of issues raised about the judge’s instructions to the jury, she pled guilty to manslaughter claiming that she acted under the stress of parenting a child with a disability.

She said she was sorry and even assured us all, “I won’t kill another baby.” Hopefully, we can believe her this time around, although she also assured us that she didn’t kill Scarlett at her last trial and that didn’t turn out to be true.  Well, I can certainly believe that it must be very stressful to be the parent of a child with autism, and after the days and weeks turn into weeks and years, that stress can take a toll on a parent. I have known lots of parents of children with autism and lots of parents of children with other disabilities and many of them tell me that it can be pretty stressful. Yet, many seem to handle 20 or 30 or  more years of it without being overwhelmed by homicidal thoughts. So how long did Xuan Peng bare the stress of raising a child with autism? Herdaughter was only four years old, so we know it was not more than 4 years, but even four years can seem like an eternity to be under that much stress.

Well, according to the National Post, Scarlett was sent back to China to live with her gandmother shortly after she was born and had just returned:

Peng gave birth to her daughter, Scarlett, in 2000 and went into depression. Unable to care for her daughter, Peng and her then-husband sent Scarlett to live with her maternal grandmother in China. When Scarlett and Peng’s mother returned in 2004, Scarlett was diagnosed with autism.

The same afternoon Scarlett was diagnosed, Peng was left alone with the child for three hours — the first time Scarlett had been solely in her mother’s care since September 2001. Frustrated by her daughter’s disruptive behaviour, Peng pushed her daughter’s head underwater in the family bathtub.

Three hours… Well, that really spits in the face of all of those other parents of autistic sons and daughters who manage to andle their emotions days, weeks, months, years, and decades longer. Three hours? Three hours!     ….. But Xuan Peng is not the only parent who kills a child with a disability to get a “get-out-of jail-free” card from Canadian courts. The truth is that if a Canadian mom or dad who kills a child with a disability says “I was stressed and now I am sorry” they will probably not see the inside of cell for long.

This is basically a provocation defense. It blames the child and transforms the real offender into a victim. I truly DO BELIEVE that these parents are stressed. Just like I have no doubt that the husband who kills his wife because she has threatened him with divorce is genuinely stressed, or the traditional religious father of a girl who refuses to cover her head with a Hijab is honestly and truly stressed. I am quite certain that the woman who finds out that her boyfriend  is not going to leave his current wife and children may be deeply stressed.  Yet I don’t think any of these things are justifiable provocation for homicide. It worries me that as a society a child’s autism is seen as any more of a provocation than any of these other things.

Why do we provide the least protection for our most vulnerable citizens?

Oh, Canada

Sometimes you break my heart!

The jury, however, rejected this argument and  convicted Smail of the 2005 murder. According to a report in the New Zealand Herald, the provocation defense has been stricken from law in New Zealand but was available to Smail because the it was removed after the 2005 killing of McCormick.  Sentencing is scheduled for August 11, 2010.

A story by Tom Hennigan published in the Irish Times describes the one such case:

Fair Leonardo Porras Bernal had a mental age of nine, could not read or write, and never strayed too far from his home in Soacha, a gritty satellite town of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia…. Fair Leonardo was dead, and had been buried in a common grave hundreds of kilometres away in the far north of the country. The army said they had killed him during combat with a group of guerrillas just four days after he went missing…. it made no sense. How had her mentally disabled son transformed himself into a uniformed, armed guerrilla ready to take on South America’s most battle-hardened military, just four days after suddenly disappearing from home?

In addition to the simple financial gain of these bonuses (about $1800 US per kill), these killings also inflate the apparent success of the anti-guerilla forces.

The sun shines on this deadly new morning

The church bells ring an early warning

Your eyes shine as I turn on the motor

The tears fall as the mercy gets closer.”

and

Another day and another full seizure

Another pill, you spiral down deeper

Another cut by a surgical butcher’

It’s just a way of prolonging the torture

Osbourne says that he is not taking sides, just exploring what Mr. Latimer might have been thinking.

Some people don’t believe in taking sides on issues like ethnic cleansing, the holocaust, or child murder. I am sure that Osbourne’s album will be a big hit. You can read more in the Vancouver Sun.

29 May 2010 – Surrey, UK

Two decades ago Barbara Waxman (1991) challenged those of us who are concerned about violence against people with disabilities to face this issue in her article “Hatred: The unacknowledged dimension in violence against disabled people.” Yet for the most part this issue remains under the radar. For example, here in Canada, Canadian police agencies reported a total of two cases of hate crimes against people with disabilities for the year 2006. Based on interviews with victims of violent crime, however, Statistics Canada found 36,000 cases of violence against people who were targeted because of their disabilities for the same year. They attribute the discrepancy to the narrow criteria used to officially designate crimes against people with disabilities as hate crimes.

Sherry, an Australian who now teaches at the University of Toledo (Ohio) describes some well known and lesser known cases and provides valuable conceptual analysis. I won’t tell you that you will enjoy reading this book, but I will say this is “must” reading for someone who really cares about violence against people with disabilities and wants to do something about it.

The book can be found on the Ashgate website and is available as hardcover or as an e-book.

According to the Times On-Line, Glen had been dead for at least a day before police came to the hotel in response to concerns presented by a family member.

Chief Superintendent Carl Davies, is quoted as saying:

I would like to give my condolences to Glen’s family and friends at what is a very sad time…. It is especially heartbreaking that the incident has involved somebody so young. This will no doubt be a huge shock to the local community. A thorough and professional investigation will continue.