خشونت هدفمند توسط همسایگان و اعضای جامعه علیه زنان معلول
Abstract
Introduction
Key frameworks
Investigating violence against women with disability
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Abstract
This article explores attacks by neighbours and/or members of local communities on women with disability as a form of hate crime and, more specifically, targeted violence. We draw on interviews conducted in 2017 with women with disability living in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia. These women spoke about ongoing experiences of physical, sexual, psychological, emotional and financial violence perpetrated by members of their local communities. They stressed the severity of this violence, the impact on their security and feelings of safety, and barriers to accessing justice. These women faced both disbelief and police indifference after reporting. Their experiences convey how they met with prejudice that casts the lives of people with disability as less worthy, and the effects of a hatred/vulnerability dichotomy that ultimately limits adequate responses. In the absence of a shared understanding of these crimes, disablist norms prevail, exposing women to ongoing violence and limiting access to justice.
Introduction
This article explores disablist violence perpetrated against women with disability by neighbours and community members (NCMs) as a form of hate crime and, more specifically, as targeted violence. We argue that the lack of awareness about the existence of this form of targeted violence combines with widespread gendered and disablist prejudice to create a climate of impunity in which women are abused and their access to justice inhibited. ‘Neighbours’ and ‘community members’ are generally not intimate partners, family members, or carers, nor are they necessarily strangers. NCMs form part of the wider community in which women with disability live. To date there has been little systematic research on hate crime perpetrated against people with disability (Mason et al., 2017; Roulstone & Mason-Bish, 2013). This article draws on interviews conducted with women with disability in the remit of the project Women, Disability and Violence: Creating Access to Justice, carried out in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, from 2017 to 2018. Five women interviewed in this research spoke of severe violence perpetrated against them by NCMs. For many of these women the violence was ongoing. We take a grounded approach in this article, centering the voices and experiences of these five women in our work. The women stressed the severity of this violence, the impact on their security and feelings of safety, and the barriers to adequate services or provisions for both recognising and stopping the violence.