Disability Justice

Do you need help?

…OUR MISSION IS TO END SEXUAL AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN ARIZONA.

People living with disabilities are among the most vulnerable when it comes to violent victimization.

ACESDV is here to help organizations who are seeking to be more inclusive for survivors with disabilities.

During the past 3 years, ACESDV along with the Grand Canyon Collaborative, conducted a Statewide Needs Assessment to evaluate the issues that affect survivors living with disabilities.

During this process, we were able to identify several Key Findings in Arizona. The most prevalent findings we were able to identify, and address include:

Survivors feel less safe when they are addressed without compassion or genuine support.
Individuals living with disabilities do not all receive standardized, appropriate training on healthy relationships and boundaries.
Individuals with disabilities have significant barriers to service delivery, including negative attitudes, lack of accommodation, and transportation.
Hard of Hearing individuals report substantial concern with service delivery due to providers not understanding accommodations specific to this population. This is also assumed for Deaf individuals.
Individuals living with disabilities seek shared spaces where they can safely seek services and connect with others with similar experiences.
Disability Law Providers may have the skills to work with individuals who have disabilities and are survivors of violence but lack actual experience in working with survivors.
Disability Service Providers report little to no training about working with individuals who report sexual violence.
Survivors do not feel supported in the process of working with Law Enforcement or Prosecution.
Victim Service Providers do not have the training, access, or funding to be fully accessible for individuals with disabilities.
Services such as disability service providers and victim service providers are not equitably distributed across the state of Arizona.

These Key Findings have guided us into the creation of this webpage and its contents.

ACESDV is committed to not only working to improve our own internal practices when working with ALL survivors, but also to assist advocacy organizations, disability organizations, other training organizations, or any other community organizations who need guidance.

We have developed a Best Practices Toolkit to assist organizations who need resources for working with survivors living with disabilities or who would like to self-evaluate. The toolkit covers various opportunities and areas to evaluate such as:

-your organization’s ability to serve individuals living with disabilities
-your organization’s ability to serve survivors
-the ADA accommodations within your building
-the ADA accommodations outside of your building.

This project was supported by Grant No. 2020-FW-AX-K005 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Six Facts About

People with Disabilities and Violence

People with disabilities have a higher lifetime prevalence of experiencing abuse than people without disabilities.

People with disabilities experience violent crime at twice the rate of people without disabilities.

People with disabilities are three times as likely to be sexually assaulted as their peers without disabilities.

In 2008, intimate partners perpetrated 27% of violent crime against women with disabilities and 1.1% of crime against men with disabilities.

Police are less likely to respond to reported violence against victims with disabilities than they are to report violence against victims without disabilities. Police respond to 90% of reports by victims without disabilities and 77% of reports by victims with disabilities.

A survey conducted by the Spectrum Institute of Disability and Abuse Project found that 70% of respondents with disabilities experience some form of abuse by an intimate partner, family member, caregiver, acquaintance, or stranger. Of those…

*87.2% experienced verbal/emotional abuse

*50.6% experienced physical abuse

*41.6% experienced sexual abuse

*37.4% experienced neglect

*31.5% experienced financial abuse

*37.3% reported the abuse to law enforcement

*Alleged perpetrators were arrested in 10% of abuse cases reported to law enforcement.

NCADV | National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. (2018). Retrieved 6 July 2022, from https://ncadv.org/blog/posts/domestic-violence-and-people-with-disabilities

What

Work Are We Doing?

At ACESDV, we have made it a priority to focus on this population to provide better resources and education for survivors and advocates alike. We are currently working with survivors of disabilities through the Office of Violence Against Women grant, which allows us to better support, train, and advocate for this community. We have also partnered with local organization Ability360 to provide specific training around this initiative to all community partners.

Additionally, we receive funding through the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council to provide education to sexual violence advocates, public fiduciaries, legal service providers, group homes, day treatment centers, independent living centers, community-based disability advocacy organizations, and long-term care facilities. Training to these organizations has been limited in the past, due to lack of existing knowledge and education. Our goal is to increase knowledge around sexual abuse among providers to prevent future abuse and retraumatization among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities throughout Arizona.

Resources

For Sexual Assault Survivors with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

For Domestic Violence Survivors with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

To request a specific training in this area, click here

ReciteMe/ACESDV-Accessibility Statement