Reliable national figures are not available, but in Vermont’s Bennington County for example, the proportion of disabled child sex abuse cases to other child sex abuse cases has risen from almost zero to more than 50 percent in the last seven years, according to Christina Rainville, Chief Deputy State’s Attorney.

There were 151 child sexual abuse investigations in 2011 in Bennington County, and, of those, 35 were substantiated, according to the Vermont report from the Department of Children and Families.

Normally, the State Attorney office prosecutes all substantiated cases, although there are rare exceptions when they do not, and the office sometimes will litigate cases outside of the state agency recommendations, said Rainville.

“I think predators target children with disabilities because these children have a hard time communicating what happens to them,” said Rainville, who has written extensively on the challenges of interviewing disabled young sex abuse victims and prosecuting their cases  for the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Center on Children and the Law.

To address what they consider a lack of  attention to this issue, deaf community advocates such as Esposito have launched a national task force. The group, comprising representatives from the law enforcement, legal and research communities, held its first meeting in Washington DC last month.

It expects to issue a report with full recommendations in two years.

“People with disabilities are largely invisible in our society,” says Nancy Smith, Director
of the Center on Victimization and Safety at the Vera Institute of Justice, a national non-profit based in New York, which convened the task force.

Monique Hoeflinger, Senior Program Officer at Ms. Foundation for Women, which is funding the two-year study, adds that child sex abuse victims generally encounter difficulties in dealing with courts and law enforcement.

“The criminal justice system…. is set up to re- victimize kids,” she claims. “And when it comes to the disabled community, it almost completely fails.

“There are very few services and support for kids with disabilities.”

Difficult to detect and intervene

The daily realities of caring for children with disabilities mean that it can be difficult to detect, report or intervene in cases of abuse.

Numerous helpers and caregivers cycle in out of their lives— From the aides who  change, feed and dress children, to physical therapists and bus drivers who transport the children.

Several of the most notorious cases have been widely covered in the press.

In 2013, a suburban Illinois man was sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually assaulting a developmentally disabled woman. In 2011, an upstate New York man was sentenced to 40 years for molesting a severely autistic boy that he was supposed to be caring for while working for the Central New York Developmental Disabilities Services.

The New York Times detailed systematic abuse taking place in homes for disabled persons in a 2011 series.

At the same time, those who care for children with disabilities feel they don’t have the tools or relationships to educate their clients about sexual abuse.

“We would love to get someone in from the outside  (law enforcement) to speak to us,”  said Tracey Hoffman, a  social worker coordinator at United Cerebral Palsy Association of Nassau County Inc., in Roosevelt, NY. Association Staff has been working to address sexual abuse issues for over a decade, but with limited success in reaching the students and families, Hoffman said.

Their school-based program, Children Learning Center, which serves young people from 2 to 21 years old, runs two workshops to educate them on unwanted sexual behavior.

One program for younger children, “No, Go, Tell” goes over stranger danger, inappropriate touching and asks them to identify immediately whatever seems uncomfortable for them. A technique called “Circles” helps them identify the people they trust most, with the most trustworthy (such as family numbers) in the first circle, and aides and caregivers are placed in a third or fourth circle.

Nevertheless, students often put caretakers in the first circle.

“It’s so difficult to get the concepts across,” said Hoffman. “The kids don’t get that aides and social workers are not their family. “

She also said that programs are only in place for the children that have more cognitive awareness and ability. The more developmentally disabled kids don’t attend programs.

Julie Ann Petty, project trainer for Partners for Inclusive Communities at the Arkansas University Center on Disabilities at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and a member of the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities hopes to close the gap between law enforcement and the disable community.

She counsels disabled adults who have been abused as children, and also works to educate the larger community about interacting with persons with a disability.

Training police

Petty, a married mother of two with cerebral palsy, believes law enforcement training is key to helping the disabled community report more crime and abuse to official channels.

“Law enforcement (authorities) are not comfortable with people who have disabilities,” said Petty.  “(For example) I have no control of my body and people might be scared of that.”

Massachusetts recognized the barriers to communication between the disability community and law enforcement in the late 1990s when a high profile sexual and physical abuse case against two individuals with a disability forced the state to change its procedures, said Elizabeth D. Scheibel, former District Attorney for the Northwestern District.

Scheibel chaired the statewide task force that eventually formed in 1999: “Building Partnerships for the Protection of Persons with Disabilities.”

“if we are not allowing disabled people equal access to the criminal justice system then shame on us,” said Scheibel.

The partnership, which Scheibel deems a best practice, formalized a memorandum of understanding between all the district attorneys in the state and adult and child protective services that typically investigate cases.

Law enforcement authorities are also trained how to work with the disabled community—in particular, with children reporting a crime.

Rainville, whose forthcoming book, Justice for Juveniles with Disabilities, will be released by the ABA’s Center on Children and the Law later this year,  likes to tell the story vstory of her first client—a young girl with cerebral palsy—as a way of illustrating how authorities can address the challenges of working with disabled child victims.

The girl let investigators know she was molested by drawing graphic pictures and words of what happened to her in the sand.  The technique allowed investigators to identify 11 different people, many  of whom turned out to be known sexual offenders.

“It made us realize that we can communicate in ways that we’re able to hold up in court,“ Rainville said.