From the Boston Globe:

A Massachusetts program overseeing home health aides for seniors and people with disabilities is marked by fraud and crime, according to a report from the state’s auditor. Some home health workers were found to have committed felonies, including manslaughter, assault, and threatening to commit murder.

Auditors also found that Massachusetts’ Medicaid program is one of only 4 in the country that has no job requirements for personal care attendants.

State Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci said the findings should prompt the program to establish job requirements, including training and criminal background checks, like virtually every similar program in the nation.

State health officials claimed bias in the data sample, which was based on 30 patients whose cases had previously been reviewed for fraud by the federal government. Among those 30 patients, the report found $207,283 in overpayments to attendants over a four-year period. Fourteen of the 30 patients had hired attendants with criminal records, including 12 attendants involved with violent crimes and ten who had committed robbery.

From the Dallas Morning News:

When 14-year-old Thomas Hayman used a profanity in special education classroom, the reaction in his Dallas-area junior high school was swift: A police officer was called, and Thomas got a $364 ticket. Police and school officials say the school has little tolerance for disorderly conduct.

His mother, Camber Hayman, says she plans to fight the misdemeanor charge and fine. She says the police officer may not have been properly trained in how to deal with students like her son, who has Asperger’s syndrome. Officials with the Dallas Police Department say all officers receive the necessary training.

In a related Texas case, a 10-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome received a $260 ticket at school in El Paso after he repeatedly fell asleep in class, made noises in the hall, and sat down and wouldn’t get up.

By Joe Shapiro on National Public Radio:

Recent findings by the Justice Department that people with disabilities are one-and-a-half times more likely to be the victims of violent crime comes as no surprise to those in the field. They say crime is a daily fact of life for many people with disabilities, and most of it never gets public attention.

The study found disabled women were the most at risk: They were victims at rates almost twice that for other females. Rape and sexual assault were 2.7 times as high.

The International Coalition on Abuse and Disability, run by University of Alberta professor Dick Sobsey, tracks individual reports of crimes against people with disabilities in the U.S., Canada and other places around the world. And the group’s Web site gives an eye-opening, and distressing snapshot of just how often this crime happens and how it’s often cruel and deliberate.

See also:

Disabilities make victims of crime difficult to assist – [Fort Wayne, IN] Journal Gazette

Two days after the federal report was released, Indiana prosecutors filed charges in the alleged rape of a woman with cerebral palsy and developmental disabilities. A 21-year-old man and three teens – ages 13, 16 and 18 – allegedly took turns raping the woman in a field.

Local law enforcement officials say crimes against people with disabilities are under-reported and difficult to prosecute.

“Our biggest problem, No. 1, is their being able to verbally talk with us, and No. 2 is their cognitive ability to understand what happened to them,” [Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards] said. “A lot (of victims) are very childlike. They don’t have the ability or wherewithal to say no, especially when their caregivers may be the ones committing the crimes.”

Safety fears grow with demand for home care – Detroit Free Press

Writing in the [UK] Times, columnist Tim Rushby-Smith says the recent death of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter point up the need to build positive attitudes toward people with disabilities through children’s literature. An excerpt:

In the light of the Fiona Pilkington case, where a mother was driven to take her own life and that of her disabled daughter, much has been said about the failure of the police and the local authority to respond to the harassment and violence directed at the family. However, the case also highlights a more fundamental problem with attitudes towards disability. We are at a point where racially motivated attacks are properly recognised and widely reported, yet assaults and bullying directed at a person with a disability is merely perceived as “anti-social behaviour”.

… Books and education provide an opportunity to move away from a point-and-stare culture, and can help all children to perceive those with a disability as part of normal, everyday life.

Rushby-Smith writes the ‘Life as a disabled dad’ column for the Times.

From CNN/WIBW, Associated Press, press release from U.S. Department of Justice:

A study by the Department of Justice has found that people with disabilities are 50 percent more likely to experience nonfatal violent crime.

Within specific groups, the risk of violence was even higher. Women with disabilities were almost twice as likely to be the target of a non-fatal violent crime as their nondisabled counterparts, as were people with disabilities aged 12 to 19 and 35 to 49.

The study, the first of its kind, found that people with cognitive disabilities had a rate of nonfatal violent crime higher than the rates for people with all other kinds of disabilities. (about 28 per 1,000 persons aged 12 or older in 2007).

The study’s authors did not speculate on the reasons for the findings, but noted that nearly one in five of the violent crime victims with a disability believed that they were targeted because of their disability.

Among other findings:

• People with a disability had an age-adjusted rate of rape or sexual assault that was more than twice the rate for people without a disability.
• More than half of violent crimes against people with disabilities were against those with more than one type of disability.

All told, the report tallied about 716,000 nonfatal violent crimes like assault, rape and robbery against Americans with disabilities during the year 2007. This population experienced about 2.3 million property crimes over the same period.

From the AP/Chicago Tribune:

A new “premise alert program” allows families in some areas of Illinois to share information about medical problems and disabilities with local police and fire departments. Advocates say the information will allow emergency responders to act with greater speed and sensitivity.

The point of the program is to prepare officers approaching a person with a disability during an emergency and to understand, for example, that they may fear loud noises or be unable to hear spoken instructions. Firefighters would know if a burning home is likely to contain someone who can’t get out. Advocates say Pennsylvania is the only other state to offer the service so broadly.

Itasca deputy police chief Dean Myles, who serves on the board of the Autism Society of Illinois, said the service could help prevent potentially fatal encounters between police and disabled people, including one in 2005 that killed Hansel Cunningham of Des Plaines.

(more…)

From ABC News and the Houston Chronicle:

A former Corpus Christi State School employee has been sentenced to four years in prison for his role in organizing “fight clubs” between residents with developmental disabilities.

D’Angelo Riley, 23, was called a “ringleader” by prosecutors, who said he provided play-by-play commentary on cell phone video recordings of the brawls.

Eleven staff members were identified in the videos and six were charged. Riley is the second to be sentenced to jail time for causing injury to people with disabilities, and a third received a suspended sentence. Cases against the other three are pending.

Earlier posts here.