Introduction
| Date | 01 September 2003 |
| Published date | 01 September 2003 |
| Pages | 2-3 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14668203200300018 |
| Author | Jon Glasby |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Sociology |
2© Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Limited The Journal of Adult Protection Volume 5 Issue 3 • September 2003
Introduction1
No one is sure how many people with
learning difficulties are sexually abused, but
we know that the number is extremely high
and that the real extent of the problem is
probably hidden. Despite this, the vast
majority of perpetrators go undiscovered and
unpunished as a result of the discriminatory
nature of the criminal justice system and the
failure of health and social services to protect
the people in their care. Even when cases
come to court, people with learning
difficulties are often seen as ‘unreliable
witnesses’ and a conviction is rarely secured
(see Alison Tarrant’s article in this issue).
In November 2002, a group of
practitioners and managers from health and
social care met at the University of
Birmingham’s Health Services Management
Centre for a one-day seminar to explore the
complex and emotional issues at stake with
regard to the sexual abuse of people with
learning difficulties. In particular, delegates
spent a long time examining their own
attitudes to abuse and their own
understanding of the concept of vulnerability.
While we know that people with learning
difficulties are very vulnerable to abuse, we
do not always think through what makes this
user group vulnerable.
Against this background, a key issue to
emerge from the seminar was that
vulnerability is the result of the way in which
our society responds to people with learning
difficulties – our emphasis on written and
verbal communication, our tendency to
isolate and disempower people with learning
difficulties, and so on. To suggest that there
are factors inherent in people with learning
difficulties implies that they are in some way
at fault or responsible for the abuse. When
applied to children or to the rape of women,
this is often referred to as ‘victim blaming’
and is a concept that most of us would try to
avoid (the ‘she should not have invited him
up for coffee/worn a short skirt’ approach).
This theme is taken up in much more detail
by Guy Wishart in the second article in this
special edition of the Journal of Adult
Protection.
After this discussion, the seminar focused
on a number of additional issues:
■vulnerability is created in part by
disempowerment, and tackling this takes
significant time and effort
■the experience of sexual abuse can be very
emotionally damaging, prompting feelings
of despair, depression and self-hatred. Far
too often, people with learning difficulties
are denied access to counselling and their
emotional needs go unmet. To underline
this issue, delegates heard a case study
from a specialist voluntary agency,
Respond, who described how they provide
counselling to people with learning
difficulties who have been sexually abused
and the benefits that this can have (see
Alan Corbett’s article in this issue).
Above all, however, there was a strong sense
from participants and from a number of
research studies that local agencies and front-
line workers are very committed to tackling
1This introduction is a shortened version of a paper which appeared in Learning Disability Practice in March 2003.
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