Abuse of adults and children with disabilities

According to the American Sign Language (ASL) website, children with disabilities are abused 3.4 times more often than other children. Boystown University Hospital conducted a study to identify prevalence of disabilities among maltreated versus nonmaltreated children. Researchers merged over 39,000 hospital records from 1982 to 1992 with the social service central registry, the foster care review board and police records for both intra and extra familial maltreatment. This merger resulted in 6,000 matches, an overall maltreatment prevalence rate of 15 percent, with 64% having an identified disability. Obviously, this is much higher than the 15-20% prevalence rate of individuals with disabilities in the population. Published in 2000, the study found of maltreated children the following disability identifications:

Behavior disorders 38%
Speech/language disorders 9%
Mental retardation 6%
Hearing impairment 6%
Learning disability 6%
Other disabilities 4%
Health impairments 2%
ADD (w/o behavior disorder) 2%

Many people think that "behavior disorders" are a result of the abuse, however, this is not a precursor at all.In a related study, these researchers examined the records of public and parochial school children and matched these with the child abuse registry. 31% of the children with an identified disability had records of maltreatment in either social services or police agencies.The relative risk for maltreatment among children with disabilities was found to be three times that of other children. There was a strong association between disabilities & neglect, with children with disabilities being four times more likely to be victims than other children.Children with behavior disorders and mental disabilities were significantly more likely to be neglected.

Another interesting fact that I found about adults is that, adults with physical disabilities are abused at about the same rate as the general population, yet the abuse is more extensive and long lasting. Adults with other types of disability, including intellectual disabilities, are abused approximately 7 times more frequently than others.