Handout

Maltreatment of Children with Disabilities

Some of the factors believed to increase the vulnerability of children with disabilities to maltreatment are:

• Society's devaluing children with disabilities
• Failure to acknowledge the sexuality of children with disabilities, coupled with failure to provide developmentally appropriate sexual information
• Denial that abuse can affect children with disabilities to the same extent that it can affect other children
• Inability to accept that caregivers of children with disabilities would abuse them
• Caregiver lack of knowledge of how to care for a child with disabilities and lack of knowledge regarding realistic expectations
• Caregiver lack of social, emotional, and financial resources
• The child’s own internalization of his or her devaluing by society, resulting in shame and reluctance to demand respectful treatment
• The child’s compliance and reluctance to stand up for his or her rights
• The child’s lack of understanding that the abuser’s behavior is wrong
• The child’s inability to defend against the abuser
• The child’s difficulty in communicating the maltreatment, and the abuser’s assumption that the child can’t tell or won’t be believed