Win For Disabled Sexual Assault Victims
February 10, 2012 2 Comments
Today there was a win for people with disabilities when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a disabled victim of alleged sexual assault will get a second trial.
The woman’s original testimony, about alleged assault when she was 19 from her step-father in 2004, was dismissed because she couldn’t describe what an oath was and she has the mental capacity of a three-year-old.
However, the woman was able to describe what the man did to her by demonstrating to police where she was touched and how.
Clearly, today’s ruling by the Supreme Court is the correct one.
- “Adults with mental disabilities may have a practical understanding of the difference between the truth and a lie and know they should tell the truth without being able to explain what telling the truth means in abstract terms.”
There will now be another trial using the woman’s testimony.
This is a great step forward for the rights of people with disabilities, and is especially important considering people with disabilities are abused at a much higher rate than the general public. This is generally because abusers assume they won’t know how to protect themselves, how to report it, or how to describe what happened to police. In fact, up to 83 percent of women with disabilities will be abused in their lifetime!
This has to stop and today’s ruling will go a long way in helping those who have suffered.
Contact the author here: mack@morningquickie.com
Yet another passive article invisibilising male accountability. Notice the stepfather is charged with systematically committing serial male sexual violence against his stepdaughter. Males are overwhelmingly the ones committing male sexual violence against – not unknown individuals whose sex is conveniently kept hidden out of sight and out of mind.
Males deliberately target disabled women and girls because these male serial rapists know the disabled women and girls will commonly not be believed by our male supremacist legal system. Male sexual violence against women and girls is real and it happens because men continue to believe in their pseudo male sex right to women and girls. Until such time as male accountability is publicly recognised and stated men will continue (rightly) to believe they can commit sexual violence against women and girls and not be held accountable and named for their crimes against women and girls.
Hi Hecuba,
Thanks for your comment. I’m not sure why you say it’s a passive artcile invisiblising male accountability. The whole point of the article is that now this man (if, indeed, he is guilty) can be held accountable because the trial will get another go-ahead and the woman will get her day in court. We also mentioned that disabled people get abused more than non-disabled people, which we think is horrific. Let’s hope the woman in question finally gets some justice.
-Mack