Autism and Title IX Reporting

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the growing number of college students on the spectrum:

College students on the spectrum face an unusually high risk of sexual assault.  There is a flip side:  misunderstandings that lead others to accuse them of sexual harassment. Lee Burdette Williams at Inside Higher Ed:

What are they not good at? Interpreting the subtle cues of social interactions, seeing the often fine line between wanted and unwanted attention -- flirty and creepy, appropriate and inappropriate. And that is what lands these students in a chair in the office of a Title IX investigator.

My advice to my former colleague was to coach her student to begin the conversation this way: “I have autism” (or Asperger’s, which is sometimes what students prefer to say). “It is a learning difference that sometimes makes it difficult for me to understand the implications of things that I say, or that others say to me. I’m sorry if my posters offended anyone, and I won’t do this kind of thing again.” I heard later from my former colleague that this is what he did, and the situation was resolved through the conversation with the investigator, with no further action required.

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 Both of these streams -- Title IX-based reporting and the matriculation of students with autism -- will continue to grow. Colleges have a duty to the students they’ve admitted, especially students with known disabilities, to assure proper training and response. The Americans With Disabilities Act requires it.

But a student may exhibit autistic characteristics and lack a formal diagnosis. Or they might never have been told they have autism. Or they may know but choose not to disclose. A recent study of over 600 students at one institution showed that while just 10 first-year students disclosed a diagnosis of autism, 148 students reported they had enough autism-related characteristics to warrant a clinical assessment.

One could say that failing to disclose removes from the institution any responsibility to treat the student differently. But if certain characteristics and deficits may lead to a student being suspended or expelled, does it not seem incumbent on institutions to be certain they are fully capable of making such distinctions?

Disability and Sexual Abuse

Recent stories have detailed sexual harassment and abuse in politics, business, and other areas of American life.  People with autism and other disabilities are especially at risk.

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

People with disabilities are victims of violent crime three times as often as people without disabilities. The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report separately on autistic victims, but it does note that the victimization rate is especially high among those whose disabilities are cognitive. A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers. Autistic respondents were more than twice as likely to say that had been the victim of rape and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact.

Click here for resources from RespectAbility 

Click here for resources from Autism Speaks.

From the HHS Office of Women's Health:

Research suggests that women with disabilities are more likely to experience domestic violence, emotional abuse, and sexual assault than women without disabilities.1 Women with disabilities may also feel more isolated and feel they are unable to report the abuse, or they may be dependent on the abuser for their care. Like many women who are abused, women with disabilities are usually abused by someone they know, such as a partner or family member.

In 2014, S. M. Brown-Lavoie, M. A. Viecili, and J. A. Weiss published an article in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders titled "Sexual Knowledge and Victimization in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders."  The abstract of the study, which involved ASD people in Canada:

There is a significant gap in understanding the risk of sexual victimization in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and the variables that contribute to risk. Age appropriate sexual interest, limited sexual knowledge and experiences, and social deficits, may place adults with ASD at increased risk. Ninety-five adults with ASD and 117 adults without ASD completed questionnaires regarding sexual knowledge sources, actual knowledge, perceived knowledge, and sexual victimization. Individuals with ASD obtained less of their sexual knowledge from social sources, more sexual knowledge from non-social sources, had less perceived and actual knowledge, and experienced more sexual victimization than controls. The increased risk of victimization by individuals with ASD was partially mediated by their actual knowledge. The link between knowledge and victimization has important clinical implications for interventions.

Sexual Victimization

Disability Scoop reports:

Adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their typically-developing peers, researchers say, and a lack of education could be part of the reason why.

In a survey of adults with and without autism, 78 percent of those on the spectrum reported at least one instance of sexual victimization compared to less than half of their typically-developing peers.

People with autism were more than twice as likely to say that had been raped and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact, according to findings published in the September issue of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

For the study, researchers surveyed 95 adults with autism and 117 without, ages 19 to 43. Individuals were asked about unwanted sexual contact and their knowledge of contraception, reproductive health and other issues surrounding sexuality.

Abuse of the Disabled

A Thursday release from the Disability and Abuse Project:

The Disability and Abuse Project today released a report that gives low grades to state and local agencies for failing to respond adequately to widespread abuse of children and adults with disabilities.

The Report -- "Abuse of People with Disabilities: Victims and Their Families Speak Out" -- analyzes the results of what may be the largest survey of its kind in the nation. More than 7,200 people took the survey which inquired into the experiences of people with disabilities as victims of abuse and bullying. Family members, advocates, service providers and various types of professionals also responded.

Over 70% of people with disabilities said they had been victims of abuse. More than 50% of these victims had experienced physical abuse, with some 41% having been victims of sexual abuse. Nearly 9 of 10 respondents with disabilities had suffered verbal or emotional abuse. Most victims said they had experienced abuse on more than 20 occasions.

Some autism-specific findings:

• Some disability types had a higher incidence of abuse than others. For example, 74.8% of people with mental health conditions reported they had been victims of abuse, while 67.1% of those with a speech disability, 66.5% of those with autism, 62.5% of those with an intellectual or developmental disability, and 55.2% of those with a mobility disability reported having experienced such abuse.
• The rate of sexual abuse varied greatly among victims depending on the type of disabilities they had. Some 47.4% of people with mental health conditions reported they had been victims of sexual abuse, whereas 34.2% of those with intellectual or developmental disabilities, 31.6% of those with a mobility disability, and 24.9% of those with autism reported they had experienced sexual abuse.
• The rate of victimization reported by various disability communities (defined as people with disabilities or pwd and families) was rather consistent, with the following victim types reporting they had been abused 10 or more times: mental health (59.4%), mobility (45.7%), autism (44.3%), speech (43.8%), and I/DD (39.9%).
• The rate of reporting varied among specific “disability communities” (pwd and families). Some 55.4% of victims with autism reported abuse, while 52.8% of those with a speech disability, 44.2% of those with a mental health condition, and 39.5% of those with a mobility disability did so.
• People with autism and people with mental health conditions were victims of bullying at a significantly higher rate than people with other types of disabilities. The following are the rates of bullying reported by various disability communities (pwd and families): autism (77%), mental health (74.7%), speech (66.8%), I/DD (64.3%), and mobility (55%).

Facilitated Communication: A Horror Story

On Friday, ABC's "20/20" ran an entire episode about how "facilitated communication" led to baseless allegations of sexual abuse against a Michigan father, Julian Wendrow.  Prosecutors eventually had to drop the charges, and the family reached a settlement with the police department. ABC reports:

The judge in the lawsuit called the investigation against the Wendrows a "runaway train" but nonetheless accepted prosecutors' immunity claims and dropped most of the civil charges against them.

[Prosecutor David] Gorcyca, who is now in private practice, declined requests for an interview from "20/20" but did speak in 2009 about the Wendrow case to The National Law Journal. When asked if the Wendrows deserved an apology, he responded, "Over my dead body."

At Science 2.0, Kim Wombles has more on FC and the Wendrow case.