Behind closed doors

Disabled women are twice as likely as non-disabled women to experience domestic violence, are less likely to report it and are more likely to experience it for longer before attempting to escape, ground-breaking new research finds. Katharine Quarmby asks what can be done to change this bleak picture

"At night times he’d be in the living room and I’d be in my bedroom and he’d shut the door on me…if I wanted to use the toilet or anything he’d tell me to piss myself there and then. Now obviously for me if I was non-disabled I’d be able to get up and do it…There was slapping on the face, chucking me out of the wheelchair.”

This is just one of the stories uncovered by the first comprehensive, national piece of research on disabled women’s experience of domestic violence, what their needs are and what services are available to them, published this summer by the charity Women’s Aid. Disabled consultants were involved in the research by the Violence against Women Research Group and the Centre for the Study of Safety and Well-being, at the Universities of Bristol and Warwick respectively.

They focussed on disabled women with physical and sensory impairments (funding was not available to extend the project to interview women with learning difficulties and mental health problems). They held a focus group with disabled women, interviews with activists and practitioners, two surveys of domestic violence organisations and disability organisations and
in-depth interviews with 30 disabled women who had experienced domestic violence.

The definition of domestic violence was extended to cover the different types of violence experienced by disabled women: “Disabled women experiencing abuse from partners, ex-partners, other family members, or personal assistants (including paid and informal care workers).”

A growing body of research suggests that disabled women are more likely to be abused than non-disabled women and that their impairments are often used as mechanisms of control by the abuser.

One wheelchair-user talked about her enforced isolation: “One time he actually took the battery out of this wheechair I’m in now. He just unplugged it so I couldn’t move…and [he would] shove me about sometimes and push me hard.”

One interviewee said: “He took my complete independence where I had to ask him a fortnight before I needed sanitary towels to make sure I’d get them.”

A deaf woman was sexually abused by her partner: “Being Deaf is hard work…you have to concentrate so much harder and tiring…to lip-read all the time…I’d be exhausted. And he’d be furious and slap me and kick me awake…it was sex all the time, twice a day and he would shout at me and then hold me down and I hated it, I hated it.”

Most of the disabled women interviewed were abused by intimate male partners but a number of paid carers or personal assistants (PAs) also abused women, leading to calls for this to be recognised by the police as domestic violence.

One woman said: “I have been stolen from and abused by my care workers and then there was a huge argument with social services and the housing people because they refused to believe it or even investigate it. They were just on the care workers’ side.”

A number of those interviewed said that social care professionals did not want to believe that they were being systematically abused, whether by carers or partners. Some disabled women did not recognise what happened to them as abuse, and others feared that if they told social services about the problem, they would be institutionalised or their children taken away. Very few refuges were accessible and many women believed that they could not be accommodated according to their needs – with reason. Only half of refuges surveyed had full wheelchair access, half had an adapted shower, only half had reachable light switches and sockets and only 17 per cent had services for people with visual impairments. Refuges, already very overstretched in budgetary terms, acknowledged that they wanted to do more, but struggled with resourcing issues to make adaptations.

Another problem was that women found it difficult to move area to escape violence because that might mean that they would lose their care package, PAs and adapted accommodation. They had more complex needs than non-disabled women, such as transport, assistance with personal care or sign language interpreters, that were less likely to be met. Most interviewed had experienced abuse over a long period of time, ranging from one year to 22 years and some had been abused by more than one person.

Very few disability organisations surveyed considered dealing with domestic violence to be part of their remit. Only four out of 73 employed dedicated staff with domestic violence expertise.

In all, 133 local domestic violence services responded to the survey, and just over one-third said they offered some form of specific service to disabled women. Many were attempting to make their refuges accessible, but over three-quarters believed they would breach the Disability Discrimination Act. Around half provided disability equality training, and disabled women accounted for seven per cent of users of those services. There is some good practice, but it is patchy – there is only one refuge for women with learning difficulties in the UK. Leeds council has also trailblazed in developing good practice for disabled women experiencing domestic violence – and employed a disabled project worker to develop the work of the Leeds Interagency Project. The project has produced a free video and training pack, Disbelief, provides one-to-one support for disabled women and has produced accessible information. The local refuge is also one of the few to have been refurbished with accessibility in mind.

Dr Ravi Tiara, one of two academics who carried out the research, said they had found that disabled women were enduring domestic violence for long periods of time before disclosing it and that those with high dependency needs were more likely to experience high levels of abuse.

Women had their medication stolen, their direct payments were taken from them and those interviewed felt that abuse from carers was “widespread and common”. She concluded that “abuse was preferable to care agencies moving in” and that women endured abuse because they had “nowhere to go”. Even when they did go, she added, because of the dearth of accessible accommodation, they were more likely to experience post separation violence for a longer period.

Diane Mulligan, a commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), describes the research as “key” and says that its findings will help push the issue “up the agenda”.

She says that the EHRC will discuss why so few disability organisations see domestic violence as their remit and whether it can fund work and awareness-raising in this area. The commission will be publishing its own recommendations for reform of domestic violence services and addressing violence against women in the late autumn.

In addition to the research recommendations, Women’s Aid is to review whether it needs to produce new guidance or checklists for its services.

Ruth Bashall, who provided disability equality training to the researchers, says that disabled people’s organisations, which could reach out to victims of domestic violence, are overstretched and that too many remain male-dominated. She says: “There is a real fear of being perceived as a vulnerable victim,” and that many disabled women fear that they will be institutionalised if they report abuse. “We are determined to stay in the community,” she says, and adds that the portability debate – the ability to take your package of support with you if you move to a different part of the country – is key to helping disabled women flee domestic violence.

Anne Pridmore, chair of the engagement and influence committee at Scope, who was consulted on the project, says that “disabled women and their experience of violence have been neglected for far too long.” She welcomed the research into carer and PA abuse. “I think that there are many forms of abuse, that people don’t see as such…with personalisation and individual budgets there will be people employing their own PAs and carers and it is very difficult to prove when abuse happens, and very difficult to dismiss someone.” She was not surprised by the level of abuse endured by women from intimate partners. “A lot of disabled people are trapped in relationships that non-disabled people would leave,” she says, “because they can’t get the funded support they need.”