A leading activist has submitted evidence of 68 violent deaths of disabled people – and more than 500 other potential disability hate crimes – to a major national inquiry into disability-related harassment.
Reports of the crimes were collected over just three years by Anne Novis, who leads on hate crime issues for the United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council (UKDPC) and is one of the coordinators of the Disability Hate Crime Network (DHCN).
Her evidence is based on reports collected from the media, blogs, internet message boards and personal experiences shared with her by other disabled people, and has been submitted to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) inquiry.
Her Action Now report was published by DHCN, with a second report providing further details and evidence due to be published within days by UKDPC. The second report will also be submitted to the EHRC inquiry.
Some of the disabled people whose deaths are included in the new report were killed by relatives, others by “friends” or as a result of arson attacks, while some were the victims of “deliberately planned tortures and murders” and so-called “mercy killings”.
Other crimes include rapes, domestic violence, vandalism of assistive equipment, targeted hostility by neighbours, online harassment, bullying of disabled children, “fighting” breeds of dogs deliberately set on guide dogs, and public attacks on disabled people who use wheelchairs and scooters.
Novis said the evidence she had collected was “the very small tip of a very large iceberg”.
She said: “Constantly reading about such attacks has at times made me quite depressed. Some of them are such brutal incidents, and yet so few people get justice.
“I wish people would take more notice of what we as disabled people say about the level of abuse that is happening.
“The scale of it is absolutely immense. This report only covers the articles I have found. It is just a glimpse. The reality is far, far greater.”
Among her recommendations, she calls for funding for national and local disabled people’s organisations to tackle hate crime, and for refuges to be accessible for disabled victims of domestic violence.
She also calls for disability hate crime to be recognised as a crime in its own right, rather than just an aggravating factor in other offences, and for disabled people to be covered by laws on incitement to commit hate crime, which currently only cover race, religious and homophobic hatred.
And she says more should be done to challenge the justice system to ensure it does not allow so-called “mercy killings” to be used as a justification for murder.
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
Governments, should take their responsibility, for treating the disabled and sick as somehow unworthy in society, and allowing the media to portray genuine benefit claimants as fraudulent and undeserving. That to me is tantamount to incitement if they don’t speak out against it or make laws to protect the vulnerable
Horrific abuses are an every day occurrence. I’m finding malicious people are almost as prevalent as the autism some of them misdiagnose and finding maladministration is equally to blame, in short, the majority don’t care what happens to disabled people, especially the ones who speak out against rough treatment. Eugenics is commonplace, experimentation too, my own son James a victim of a behaviourism Nazi-esque ‘school’ using behavior modification that simply cannot work with learning disabled people-only undermines them and leaves them distressed and unable to want to communicate, he’s tried running away bless him and the ignorance that keeps him shackled in this place is outsanding to all who possess common-sense. I am trying everything on this good earth to try to get my son help but hundreds have abused him, and me too for trying to help him – savages – and yet to others these cruel savages appear to be kind, sensitive and caring when there are just too many abusive people involved. I have also been punched off my walking frame when I needed it, for no reason I could fathom, and head my face slapped by a carer out-o-the-blue? Just for not being able to walk unaided? My son, when tiny and flapping his arms with excitement, was hit by a man with sports-bag – I wanted to flatten that man. What can we do? We need solutions here, we need tolerance, we need people to admit when they are wrong. Elizabeth Robillard aka Liz Lucy AIM Autistic Information Matters (since 1995) 23rd Sept. 2010