"Disabled Women Are The Sexual Assault Epidemic No One Talks About"

Cher_Alumni

Melissa Parker, a guest blogger on our online community, has recently written an article about disabled women being disproportionately impacted by sexual assault for The Unwritten website.

In light of the recent murder of Sarah Everard, the piece touches on some emotive issues with one being the damming statistic that: 

In the three years ending March 2018, disabled women were almost twice as likely to have experienced any form of sexual assault in the last year (5.7%) than non-disabled women (3.0%).

Melissa digs deep to question why this is the case and, asks further, what is driving an apathy towards the sexual assault of disabled women; a group who she suggests are dehumanised, seen as not feminine, sexual, right-bearing women but "submissive and weak, undeserving of bodily autonomy.".

Please note - the article contains discussion of sexual assault, harassment and victim blaming so heed caution if this is likely to cause you upset on reading.

To read the article, visit this The Unwritten webpage.

Over to you:

• Do you have any thoughts about Melissa's piece?
• Do you agree that society's lacking view of disabled women contributes to a muted response around high levels of sexual violence?

Let us know in the comments below.

leeCal

@Cher_Scope should the heading read ‘disabled women and the sexual ...’?
a subtly different meaning ? or perhaps it’s just me?

Tori_Scope

I can see what you mean @leeCal, but I think it's just because Cher quoted the title of the article on the original website. Hopefully people will know what is meant once they've clicked on it!