The association of sexual and reproductive rights and the Municipal Institute for People with Disabilities (IMD) have prepared a Basic Guide of Recommendations to Detect and Address Sexual Violence in Young Women with Intellectual Disabilities. This document, promoted by the Barcelona Circuit against male violence, aims to be a basic manual that helps reflect on and deconstruct myths surrounding people with intellectual disabilities, as well as the visibility of the various forms that male violence, especially sexual violence, can take in this group of people.
At the same time, this document is a commitment to the Barcelona Circuit against male violence with the goal of improving the detection and approach to male violence that young women with intellectual disabilities may experience. It can be a useful and practical tool for the professional teams of the various municipal services.
In this sense, the guide is aimed at all those professional services that make up the Barcelona Circuit against male violence with the intention of being an educational document that provides tools and strategies to different professional teams to improve the detection of sexual violence.
The basic guide of recommendations for the detection and attention of sexual violence in young women with intellectual disabilities aims to achieve three objectives:
According to data from the European Parliament (2004), 80% of girls and women with disabilities have experienced or are experiencing violence and are four times more at risk of experiencing sexual violence compared to women without disabilities.
Regarding situations of sexual violence, data from the Ministry of Equality (2020) show that people with disabilities more often (10.3%) experience it compared to women without disabilities (6.2%), and the percentage is higher in boys (6.3% compared to 3.3% in women without functional diversity).
This can be explained by several factors. Firstly, due to the conditions and factors of exclusion and discrimination that make people, groups, and groups of people live in conditions of vulnerability and difficulties to exercise and enjoy human rights. On the other hand, the lack of affective-sexual education that is present in the group of people with Intellectual Disabilities. This lack also determines the men they identify with and when they exhibit inappropriate behavior and exert a form of violence.
Regarding the aggressor, the data shows that this sexual violence is carried out by family members (29.3%) and friends and acquaintances (55.7%). In this sense, for example, a large part of the sexual violence in young women, with or without disabilities, occurs in a trusted environment.
Download the document (PDF)