Protecting the Vulnerable
The Easy Prey For Criminals
It is every parent’s worst nightmare that their daughter or son is sexually assaulted or let’s call it what it is, raped, and for parents of adult children with developmental disabilities, the fear is multiplied a thousand times and we can’t keep our children in cages so all that we can do is hope that nothing bad happens to our children.
When I was a kid, there was no such thing as special education, the students with intellectual, physical or emotional deficits were either put in the back of the class room or mysteriously disappeared. Forget about tailoring sex education to people with developmental disabilities, there wasn’t even a recognition of such special needs. Back then the schools did not consider it their place to teach sex education and I assume that the teachers wouldn’t have had a clue about how to broach the subject and parents thought they will teach their children about sex, thank you. That worked out well as nobody, nobody ever, ever even uttered the three-letter word in my house and my father died when I was 10 so the thought of my mother talking to me about sex is about as gross and unimaginable as anything I can imagine. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have had a clue about how to talk to me and instead would have told me to eat something.
I remember walking down the hall as a seventh grader at Westbrook Junior High School and the big salacious, gossip spreading like wildfire throughout the school was that Linda (I won’t use her real name) had fellatio, let’s call it what it is, gave a blowjob, to Bill (not his real name) and that only added fuel to Linda’s reputation as the class slut and none of us even gave a thought to how it might have made Linda feel, being the butt of jokes and mean gossip. I have no idea nor did I really care how the gossip might have made Linda feel but I do know that we all considered her the class slut and isn’t that compassionate. And I imagine the experience created lasting damage for Linda. For all I knew, Bill may have spread the rumor to boost his reputation as a macho seventh grader or maybe it did happen, but in any event it was nobody’s, repeat, nobody’s business. I might add that I didn’t really know what a blow job was although I thought it had something to do with blowing on a person’s penis which did not sound terribly erotic in my 14-year-old brain. And that’s how education at the university of the street worked, it led to pregnancy and abortions and ruined reputations and for boys, they grew up believing it was alright to treat women as sexual objects, while we all looked down on anyone even suspected of being a “homo” even though many of our classmates were certainly gay and tormented.
Of course, things were a little different back in my adolescence when I would guess that 98 percent of my peers may have boasted about sex but never really engaged in any sex, other than the self-sex kind, self-taught by reading with great interest, “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that almost half of all teenagers become sexually active between 15 and 19. I wonder if today’s teenager know how lucky they are.
The current sex ed curriculum in schools covers a lot of ground, including the relatively new topics of gender and sexual orientation but I have to believe that many teachers remain squeamish about the subject and many harbor their own bias particularly against LGBTQ students and those who do not identify as the gender of their birth.
So, yes, it is a complicated issue for typically adjusted young people but think about how it is to address these issues with someone with developmental disabilities, like the 25-year-old who functions at the intellectual and maturity level of a 9-year-old, like my daughter. I have no idea if my daughter is sexually active, I have no idea if she is sexually aware but I am certain that she has sexual feelings, just like the rest of us.
My daughter is vulnerable and trusting and believes that men know nothing about female issues, like menstruation or female anatomy, and her knowledge about the male anatomy and sex is totally a function of her intellect and maturity, and that innocence makes her a perfect target for abuse. Don’t take my word for it, the U.S. Department of Justice reported in 2018 that people with intellectual or developmental disabilities are at least seven times more likely to be the victims of sexual abuse than their non-disabled peers.
The Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence reports that people with intellectual disabilities are seven times more likely to experience sexual assault and women with intellectual disabilities are 11 times more likely to be assaulted than typical adults. Women with intellectual disabilities also are more likely to be assaulted by the same perpetrator.
Special education teachers have their plates full trying to teach everything from budgeting and working to appropriate topics for discussion. For me, the last thing I want to do is talk to my daughter about sex and I leave that totally to her mother as my daughter is no longer in school so instructions by her teachers can’t happen. She is involved in a daily community program where she learns about issues like socializing but I would not believe that the staff addresses matters of sex nor would they be qualified to talk about sex. Addressing sex issues with people with developmental disabilities, such as autism or Down syndrome, is complicated and then layer on subjects like consent, healthy and unhealthy relationships, L.G.B.T. issues, gender stereotyping, harassment and social media safety and it becomes clear how difficult it can be to teach.
A column in yesterday’s N.Y. Times reported that “only three states in the country explicitly include special ed students in their sex-ed requirements. Six other states provide optional resources adapted for more accessible sex ed curriculums. Thirty-six states fail to mention students with special needs at all, meaning the issue is left up to the individual school districts that, more often than not, punt the ball until parents demand it and/or a crisis arises, e.g., two students are found in a bathroom stall or a nonverbal girl is discovered to be pregnant. Then frantic measures are hastily put in place. Inevitably, the teachers are ill-prepared, the message muddled and the impact unclear, especially when these measures comes far too late for many students.”
Here are few uncomfortable facts from the Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence:
· 60 percent of child sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by someone the child knows outside the family, and 30 percent are assaulted by family members.
· For people with disabilities, perpetrators may also be caregivers, which should alarm all of us in the developmentally disabled community who rely heavily on mentors and other caregivers to help us maintain our own sanity.
· It is difficult for any survivor, let alone a person with developmental disabilities, to tell someone how they have been hurt sexually. It is important to understand, listen and believe them. Look for non-verbal signs that may indicate sexual assault, such as body posture changes and abrupt reactions to daily activities, emotional changes that may involve apathy, withdrawal from activities, an unusual calmness, a drop in academic performance or facial expressions that may be unusual for that person.
· 55 percent of rape or sexual assault victimizations occur at or near the victim’s home and 12 percent occur at or near the home of a friend, relative or acquaintance.
· Victims of sexual violence exhibit a spectrum of responses to the assault that may include: calm, hysteria, withdrawal, anger, apathy, denial, dissociation, and shock. Reactions to the assault and length of time needed to process through the experience vary with each person.
· There is no “typical” way to react to being sexually assaulted. Assumptions about a way a victim “should act” may be detrimental to the victim because each person copes with the trauma of the assault in different ways that can vary over time.
· There are many ways to help prevent sexual violence including promoting social norms that protect against violence, intervening as a bystander to protect someone who may be at risk, teaching healthy, safe dating and intimate relationship skills to adolescents, promoting healthy sexuality, creating protective, safer environments and supporting victims/survivors to lessen harm.
· For more information on preventing sexual abuse of people with developmental disabilities, visit https://www.ncedsv.org/preventing-sexual-abuse-of-people-with-developmental-disabilities/