Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

$6M Award Upheld for ‘Rampant’ Sex Abuse of Deaf and Blind Children

Excerpt from: Lawyers.com (click for full article)

 

A federal court has upheld a $5.75 million settlement of a lawsuit alleging rampant student-on-student sex abuse at the Hawaii Center for the Deaf and Blind.

The lawsuit claimed that a group of older students who called themselves “the ringleaders” bullied, terrorized, assaulted, robbed, gang raped and sodomized younger, smaller students at the school.

The parents of the victims blamed the school administration, the state of Hawaii, and school counselors for not providing a safe school environment and for trying to cover up the abuse.

Each of the class members will receive $20,000 or more, depending on the degree of abuse they suffered and other factors that figure into the impact of the abuse and the amount of damages they are owed for their injuries, such as whether the abuse affected their job history, mental health, substance abuse and other evidence of physical, psychological and emotional consequences.

Can the physically disabled be protected from sexual abuse?

Excerpt from: Salon (click for full article)

 

Silence both sheltered and shamed Erin Esposito when she endured sexual abuse that lasted for much of her childhood.

From the age of three until she was a teenager, said Esposito, who was born deaf, her father and two brothers abused her. Confused and scared, she said nothing until her adult life unraveled in a haze of drugs and alcohol.

Part of her recovery has been to recount her experiences.

“I can’t change my past, but I decided and committed myself to make this world a better place so other deaf children don’t go through what I did,” said Esposito, who is now 38 and serves as the Executive Director of Advocacy Services for Abused Deaf Victims, a national non-profit based in Rochester, NY.

One obstacle, according to Esposito who communicated with The Crime Report through a video relay service that uses a translator to communicate in real time, was that “people tend to think deaf and disabled people are stupid and can’t communicate.”

“That,” she added, “makes us a very vulnerable population.”

Lawsuit: Girl with disabilities sexually assaulted at school

Excerpt from: Tuscaloosa News (click for full article)

 

An eighth-grade student with disabilities was sexually assaulted in an empty classroom at Oak Hill School five years ago, according to a lawsuit filed in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court last week.

The suit filed by the girl’s mother claims that a 14-year-old male student assaulted the then-14-year-old girl in 2007.

The complaint names the school’s former principal, two teachers and a teacher’s aide as defendants. Tuscaloosa City Schools is not named because the system receives state funding and is immune from lawsuits in all but a few circumstances.

Audrie Pott suicide: Grim picture of Saratoga teen's final online cries of despair

Excerpt from: The Oakland Press (click for full article)

Patti's comment:This is so very heartbreaking. Girls be careful out there!

 

A few days after Audrie Pott killed herself, while her baffled parents were grieving and students across the Saratoga High School campus wore her favorite color, teal, in her memory, a couple of the 15-year-old girl's closest friends came to Audrie's mother and delivered a shocking message: "There is more to this than you know."

Sheila Pott rushed to check her daughter's cellphone, emails, texts and Facebook page. And then she found the haunting words of her beautiful, once-bubbly daughter: "These guys did (expletive) to me while I was sleeping," read one message. "This is the worst day of my life," read another.

Not only had she been sexually assaulted after drinking too much at a house party, her family's lawyers say, but pictures of her naked during the attack were being shared online.

 

Disabled people face greater risk of sexual assault

Excerpt from: Star News Online (click for full article)

 

The National Center for Victims of Crime reports that North Carolina residents with disabilities experience sexual assault at a rate five times greater than a non-disabled person.

Jessica Green, advocate for victims with disabilities at the Rape Crisis Center of Coastal Horizons Center Inc., said she has her hands full on a daily basis.

"No two days are the same, but I believe the state is catching on to the need for these types of services," Green said.

Serving both New Hanover and Brunswick counties, Green provides direct services to victims as well as sexual assault awareness education throughout the community.

Green implements an eight-week curriculum titled “Protecting Me” which can be adapted for audiences from school-age children to adults with any kind of disability. Green was recently asked to be a guest instructor at the Basic Law Enforcement Training in which she asked students to participate in scenarios designed to prepare them for victim interaction in a sexual assault investigation.

Divided Fifth Circuit Panel Decides Section 504 Student-on-Student Abuse Case

Excerpt from: Disability Law (click for full article)

 

But the majority concluded that "Stewart may nonetheless state a § 504 claim based on the District's alleged refusal to make reasonable accommodations for her disabilities."  In so holding, the court put a helpful gloss on the "bad faith or gross misjudgment" standard that some circuits apply to Section 504 claims in the school context.  The majority explained that "bad faith or gross misjudgment" is not a requirement for 504 claims in this context but is instead simply an "alternative way[] to plead the refusal to provide reasonable accommodations."  In particular, the bad faith or gross misjudgment standard makes clear that a district has failed in its accommodation obligation not only when it explicitly refuses a requested accommodation but also "when it fails to exercise professional judgment in response to changing circumstances or new information, even if the district has already provided an accommodation based on an initial exercise of such judgment."  The majority explained that a plaintiff can establish a violation of the reasonable accommodation requirement -- including under the bad faith or gross misjudgment standard -- without showing that the defendant school district's actions rose to the level of the deliberate indifference that is required to make a district liable for student-on-student harassment. 

New Director to Take Over Troubled Sonoma Disability Center

Excerpt from: KQED (click for full article)

 

The Department of Developmental Services announced Wednesday that Karen Faria, who worked at the Sonoma Developmental Center from 1985 to 2005, will become the embattled facility's latest executive director starting April 1.

The appointment comes in the wake of a California Watch series that uncovered serious allegations of patient abuse at the Sonoma Developmental Center. The reported abuses included cases of rape and molestation as well as allegations that a state worker used a Taser to inflict burns on a dozen patients.

The California Watch investigation exposed these cases and focused on failures of an internal police force to get to the bottom of the abuses. One-third of the 36 alleged rapes occurred at the Sonoma board-and-care center – one of five such facilities in California that house about 1,600 patients with severe disabilities.

Female Veterans Are Fastest Growing Segment of Homeless Population

Excerpt from: Colorlines (click for full article)

 

The Defense Department has found that about one in three military women has been sexually assaulted, a rate twice as high as that among civilians. Follow up studies have also found men and women who have faced sexual trauma in the military are now the fastest growing segment of the homeless population, with black females disproportionately affected.

Op-ed: Prevent abuse of people with developmental disabilities

Excerpt from: The Seattle Times (click for full article)

 

RECENT findings about Washington’s failures to protect individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities suggest our state has fallen woefully short in a fundamental litmus test of how society should support its most vulnerable citizens.

Most recently, the state’s failure to protect these individuals was highlighted in a report, “Too Little Too Late,” by Disability Rights Washington.

In an alarming case cited in the report, professional caregivers reported seeing a co-worker stomp on a client’s genitals. After the incident was reported, it took a week before an investigation by the state Department of Social and Health Services began. The department allowed the caregiver to continue working.

Almost one-third of backlogged complaints were closed without any investigation at all, according to the report.

The inaction by our state government when people are reportedly abused, neglected, exploited and sexually assaulted is deeply distressing.

The state must strengthen its investigations of abuse and neglect and fund timely and thorough investigations. Immediate action should be taken.

California Appeals Court Rules Sex by Impersonation Is Not Rape When the Woman Is Unmarried

Excerpt from: ABA Journal (click for full article)

Patti's comment: This is a DISGUSTING OUTCOME.

 

A defendant who admitted to police that the woman he awakened for sex likely mistook him for her boyfriend is not guilty of rape based on a trickery theory, a California appeals court has ruled.

In a decision (PDF) issued on Wednesday, California’s Second District Court of Appeal said sex by impersonation is not rape when the woman is unmarried, the Recorder reports. The court outlined the issue this way: “A man enters the dark bedroom of an unmarried woman after seeing her boyfriend leave late at night, and has sexual intercourse with the woman while pretending to be the boyfriend. Has the man committed rape? Because of historical anomalies in the law and the statutory definition of rape, the answer is no.”