Domestic Violence: Women with Physical Disabilities and their Partners.

In the fall of 2000, there was a story published inside of a university newsletter that was written by a young woman who suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of her live-in boyfriend. Having been in a horrendous car accident when she was sixteen, she was living her life as a quadriplegic. She goes on to recount her abuse, how she felt, and the services that were being offered, those that were available at that time, and those which she received as a result of being victimized in such a manner.

It was in 1990 that she was victimized by her then-boyfriend. At that time she received no services at all; even the justice system was unable to provide her with satisfactory justice.

Now, more than twenty years later, there are still a lack of services available for women with various physical impairments. The Disabled Women's Network states that there are still barriers to obtaining these services due to the fact that some shelters, and even some police stations do not have Telecommunication Devices for the Deaf (TDD) (DAWN, 2011). Issues such as these are presenting a huge problem for women with disabilities, and making it even more difficult for disabled women to leave violent situations at home.

Women with disabilities share many of the feelings that women who do not have a physical disability have when being victimized by their spouse or partner. If able bodied women are unlikely to report the abuse, women with disabilities are even less likely to. They may feel that they will be publicly humiliated or be made to feel as if they deserved the treatment by their (significant) other. Because of the lack of services offered, women in situations like these also might not feel comfortable reporting the incidents, or making any attempts at trying to leave the violent situation, as there are some women's shelters which are not handi-accessible, or have no training when it comes to dealing with those kinds of situations. Situations involving a person with a disability being victimized must be treated in a different manner, as that particular authority/shelter, et cetera, is now dealing with a person of a vulnerable population and must act accordingly.

Seeing as women who have a physical disability are substantially more likely to be the victim of domestic abuse (Brownridge, 2009, p. 237), it would seem only natural that there would be many services put in place to assist these women. For the longest time, there was a social stereotype that women with physical disabilities were asexual. It was not too very long ago that this was recognized as wrong, and that is when research into the area of women with disabilities in domestic violence situations started.

Although there has not been an extensive amount of research done on this topic, the fact that domestic violence against women with physical disabilities has finally become recognized should be enough for every women's shelter all over the world to become handi-accessible. It is sad that after all this time, there are still issues surfacing regarding issues such as the lack of TTD telephones in law enforcement buildings. It is wonderful that this is now an issue that is being discussed and there are changes coming about that make reporting these crimes easier. If women (and men) did not have any sort of feminist mind or idea, the world would not be in the place it is today, and women both with and without physical disabilities would still be hidden in the shadows.

Wisseman, K. B. (2000)"You're My Pretty Bird in a Cage." Retrieved from http://ici.umn.edu/products/impact/133/over1.html.
Brownridge, D. (2009). Violence Against Women: Vulnerable Populations.

Alyssa