Search results for ‘Subject term:"learning disabilities"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 3 of 3
Unequal justice
- Author:
- FAREED Faiza
- Journal article citation:
- Viewpoint, November 2006, pp.16-19.
- Publisher:
- Mencap/Gateway
The author reports on the work of Liverpool’s Investigations Support Unit which works to support people with a learning disability in the criminal justice system. it provides witness support, preparation and profiling for people with a learning disability giving evidence in court. To date, the unit has worked with 30 witnesses through 27 trials, most alleging serious sexual or physical assault. Of these 18 out of 21 prosecutions have been successful.
How does the legal system respond when children with learning difficulties are victimized?
- Authors:
- CEDERBORG Ann-Christin, LAMB Michael E.
- Journal article citation:
- Child Abuse and Neglect, 30(5), May 2006, pp.537-547.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
The aim was to understand how the Swedish legal system perceives and handles mentally disabled children who may have been victimized. Twenty-two judicial districts in Sweden provided complete files on 39 District Court cases (including the Appeals Court files on 17 of these cases) involving children with learning difficulties or other disabilities as alleged victims of abuse, threat and neglect. The children (25 girls and 14 boys) averaged 11.8 years of age when first allegedly victimized. Sexual abuse was the most frequently alleged crime (33 cases). Court transcripts, court files and expert assessments of the alleged victims’ disabilities and their possible consequences were examined to elucidate the ways in which courts evaluated the credibility of the alleged victims. The children's reports of their victimization were expected to have the characteristics emphasized by proponents of Statement Reality Analysis (SRA) and Criterion Based Content Analysis (CBCA) in order to be deemed credible. Expert reports were seldom available or adequate. Because many reports were poorly written or prepared by experts who lacked the necessary skills, courts were left to rely on their own assumptions and knowledge when evaluating children's capacities and credibility. Children with learning difficulties or other handicaps were expected to provide the same sort of reports as other children. To minimize the risk that judgments may be based on inaccurate assumptions courts need to require more thorough assessments of children's limitations and their implications. Assessments by competent mental health professionals could inform and strengthen legal decision-making. A standardized procedure that included psycho-diagnostic instruments would allow courts to understand better the abilities, capacities, and behaviour of specific disabled children.
Sexual offences in police reports and court dossiers: a case-file study
- Authors:
- van den BERGH Peter M., HOEKMAN Joop
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 19(4), December 2006, pp.374-382.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
In many cases, sexual abuse involving a person with an intellectual disability (ID; as a victim and/or as a perpetrator) is not reported to the police. There are very few studies addressing police procedures in these cases, and even fewer addressing procedures at the Public Prosecutor level. The present study from the Netherlands had two goals: (i) to describe relevant characteristics of cases of sexual abuse, involving people with ID (as a victim or perpetrator), that were either reported to the police or sent to the Public Prosecutor; (ii) to describe the dynamics of the process from making the report to passing the sentence. In this case-file research, 75 police reports and dossiers at the Public Prosecutor, regarding sexual abuse were followed from the initial report to the police, up to the conviction. Even if a case was reported to the police, it did not always go forward to the Public Prosecutor and when a person with ID was involved as the perpetrator, few were actually convicted. Whether the perpetrator had an ID did not appear to be a decisive factor in furnishing proof or in the conviction. There seemed to be no evidence for any specific disability-related influence on the judicial process in cases against perpetrators of sexual abuse. Differentiating police data from court data, however, revealed an important finding. Relatives appeared in court dossiers far more than in police files (34% versus 14%), while on the contrary staff made up 24% in police files and only 13% in court dossiers. This suggested that different sensitivities, protecting staff compared with relatives, may be present in the judicial process, rather than in services.