Salon.com > Cara Tabachnick

Can the physically disabled be protected from sexual abuse?

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:50:00 +0000

Silence both sheltered and shamed Erin Esposito when she endured sexual abuse that lasted for much of her childhood.

From the age of three until she was a teenager, said Esposito, who was born deaf, her father and two brothers abused her. Confused and scared, she said nothing until her adult life unraveled in a haze of drugs and alcohol.

Part of her recovery has been to recount her experiences.

“I can’t change my past, but I decided and committed myself to make this world a better place so other deaf children don’t go through what I did,” said Esposito, who is now 38 and serves as the Executive Director of Advocacy Services for Abused Deaf Victims, a national non-profit based in Rochester, NY.

One obstacle, according to Esposito who communicated with The Crime Report through a video relay service that uses a translator to communicate in real time, was that “people tend to think deaf and disabled people are stupid and can’t communicate.”

“That,” she added, “makes us a very vulnerable population.”

Sent away

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:28:00 +0000

Nathan Jordan is serving a 170-year sentence at Sterling Correction Facility in Colorado for aggravated robbery, motor vehicle theft and possession of a weapon.

But most of his crimes, which did not result in anyone’s death or injury, took place in in the late 1990s, before he was 18 . According to Colorado law, he was a juvenile offender.

So how did Jordan end up with the kind of sentence that might be meted out to serial killers or career criminals?

The answer is devastatingly simple: he was tried in adult court.

Prosecuting offenders under the legal age of majority in adult courts (the age varies from state to state) is not supposed to happen.

Juvenile courts were established over 100 years ago, in response to a consensus of opinion from educators and other experts that juveniles were entitled to be considered differently than adults in the criminal justice system. Psychological and medical research since has shown that the brains of juveniles are still not developed sufficiently to understand the consequences of their behavior and reign in self-destructive impulses.