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1) Disabled Women and Abuse

Disabled women, in common with everyone else, have the right to choose what we want to do, who we want to be with, what we do with our bodies and how we spend our time and our money, living in safety and free from abuse.

What do we mean by abuse?

When someone has power over us and they misuse it, we call this abuse. Abuse includes:

• Bullying; name calling; constant criticism; telling you that you are ugly, stupid, useless, a freak.
• Criticising you in front of other people; lying to you; being jealous of you and your friends; threatening to take your friends away from you.
• Criticising or making fun of your culture, sexuality or religion.
• Taking your money away from you; controlling how you spend your own money.
• Telling you what to do and who you can speak to; keeping you from seeing your friends and family; refusing to let you leave your home.
• Taking your property or pets away from you.
• Following you around; making unwanted telephone calls to you; ordering unwanted goods to be delivered to you.
• Refusing to let you have your food; refusing to let you have enough sleep.
• Refusing to let you have your medication; giving you too much medication.
• Refusing to let you attend your religious or cultural events.
• Taking away the disability aids and equipment that you need to live independently; denying you the help that you need in toileting, bathing and changing.
• Refusing to talk to you; scaring you; being angry all the time; breaking things; intimidating you mentally and/or physically.
• Threatening to have you deported.
• Forcing you to have an abortion or to be sterilised against your will.
• Threatening to out you as a lesbian; threatening to tell social services that you are not fit to be a mother or to live on your own.
  
• Telling you that you are mad; threatening to have you locked up.
• Making comments and suggestions about your body that make you feel uncomfortable; touching you or making you touch someone else in ways that you don’t like or want.
• Forcing you to have sex; forcing you to have sex in a way that you don’t want to.
• Threatening to hurt you, your children or your pets.
• Hurting you, your children or your pets.

Who are abusers?

Abusers can be our friends, our neighbours, our husbands or partners, our family, the people we live with, the people we work with, our care workers or personal assistants, our health workers, the people we love...

Abusers may be charming to other people. They may behave normally to us for some or most of the time. They may have been or are being abused themselves. Abusers may:

• justify their behaviour;
• tell us it is our fault;
• tell us that it is we who are abusing them;
• deny that they are abusing us at all.

But abuse is always wrong, and we never deserve it.

How do we fight abuse?

Disabled women are particularly vulnerable to abuse, because we often lack power. However, we all have some power to fight abuse.

Many disabled women have experienced a lifetime of abuse, and find it normal. First we have to acknowledge that we are being abused, and that this is wrong and should not be happening to us.

Then we have to recognise that we are not to blame, however much we have been told that we are to blame in the past.

Then we have to begin to seek help and support to end the abuse. This can take a long time, but we should not give up. All of us have the right to live independently without abuse.

This information pack contains details of how we can get help to fight abuse from friends and family, groups and organisations, the NHS, the council, the police and the courts, at work, in residential care homes and day centres and psychiatric units. It also contains details of books, websites and other helpful resources.

Next: The Women's Committee and Abuse

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