From the Chicago Tribune:

A convicted felon has been charged with the murder of a dementia patient at an Illinois nursing home, exposing the dangerous mix of violent and vulnerable residents at residential facilities in that state.

Ardyce Nauden, 62, has been charged with homicide in the beating death of 72-year-old Andres Cardona, who wandered into Nauden’s room and began eating his lunch. Nauden, who has a history of felony drug convictions and aggressive behavior, was described as “psychotic.”

Illinois is an outlier among states in its reliance on nursing homes to house adults with mental illness, including thousands of felons such as Nauden whose disabilities qualify them for Medicaid-funded nursing care.

A recent Tribune investigation documented numerous cases when elderly and disabled people such as Cardona were assaulted and even murdered by fellow nursing-home residents. The governor and state legislature have held hearings in response and are considering a series of reforms aimed at making the facilities safer and overhauling how Illinois houses and treats the mentally ill.

See also:

Convicted felons are regulars at sheltered workshop for the disabled — Salt Lake Tribune

Sheltered workshops in Utah serve the dual role of providing second chances for felons and jobs for people with developmental disabilities. Most states avoid mixing the two populations, but Utah officials said they have had no reports of clients being harmed.

A supervisor at a sheltered workshop said the ex-offenders are needed to keep such programs afloat because they bring the skills needed to attract manufacturing contracts.

The editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer calls on Ohio to mandate insurance coverage and provide adult services for people with autism.

The editorial follows an extended feature about Sky Walker, an 18-year-old man with autism who unintentionally killed his mother, Kent State University Professor Trudy Steurnagel, earlier this year. Steurnagel had sought medical help to stem her son’s violent outbursts, but chose to keep him at home with her for fear he might face abuse in an institutional placement.

An excerpt from the editorial:

With a tsunami of autistic children heading down the pike into adulthood — and expected to live longer — adult services for all of them are critical.

Currently, there are few living arrangements for most autistic youth who are over 22 and thus no longer eligible for federally mandated services.

Yet there is much that these youths can contribute if they are monitored, employed and engaged in the community.

Cuyahoga County and the rest of Ohio must devote resources to help this vulnerable population.

‘When did people with disabilities cease to matter in the battle against bigotry?’

Writing in the [UK] Independent, columnist Ian Birrell says society widely prohibits the use of “crude stereotyping” and “hateful words” when directed against other minority groups, yet accepts the same behavior when directed against those with disabilities.

This duality, he argues, reinforces the exclusion of people with disabilities from the rest of society, and gives tacit permission for acts of violence. The father of a girl with multiple disabilities, Birrell sees a link between the widespread use of disability-related insults like “retard” by celebrities and politicians, and acts of violence against people with disabilities. An excerpt:

Hate crime is the most extreme articulation of the prejudice that disabled people endure on a daily basis. Its roots lie in contempt, fertilized by misguided feelings of superiority. So will anything really change while retard is an acceptable term of abuse, and autism is used to denigrate political rivals?

… We are retreating in the fight to offer respect and inclusion to more than one million of our fellow citizens … And as the struggle for inclusion in society gets harder, the stares get more pronounced, the insults more widely heard, the harassment worse – and more and more people with disabilities will abandon their personal battles and withdraw to their ghettos.

Is this really what we want? Or should we at the very least start to mind our language?

See also: Robert Redford calls Utah leaders ‘retarded’ — Denver Post

And an earlier column: How a disabled child changed my politics — and those of David Cameron; by Ian Birrell, [UK] Independent

UPDATE: [UK] Independent readers respond to Birrell’s column.

From the BBC:

Advocates say the estimated 13 million people with disabilities in Russia face daily abuse and prejudice, while access problems and threats of violence leave them isolated and vulnerable. Tens of thousands of children with disabilities get no education.

“The situation for people with disabilities here is now worse than in Soviet times, it’s like an undeclared war against us,” said Vadim Voevodin, who has not been able to leave his Moscow apartment for the past ten years because the building will not accommodate his wheelchair.

Voevodin says acute prejudice within Russian society marginalizes people with disabilities and leaves them without basic medical care. Authorities dispute Voevodin’s claims, and say they are spending $300 million to improve facilities in the city for people with disabilities.

From the New York Times, AP/Washington Post, Los Angeles Times:

Over the objections of Republicans, the House Thursday voted to broaden the federal hate-crime law to prohibit violence against people because of their disability, sexual orientation, gender or affiliation with the military.

The measure, which now goes to the Senate, was attached to a $680 billion defense spending bill that includes a pay hike for members of the military. Similar hate crime legislation had faced a veto threat from former president George Bush, but  President Obama has promised to sign it.

“No American should ever have to suffer persecution or violence because of who they are, how they look, or what they believe,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Passage of the legislation would mark the first major expansion to law enacted after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Existing federal law defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias based on race, color, religion or national origin.

Democrats hailed the 281-146 vote as the culmination of an effort to curb violent attacks like the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die 11 years ago.

The vote comes just days after the release of a Justice Department report that found people with disabilities are 50 percent more likely to experience nonfatal violent crime than their peers. Women with disabilities were found to be victims at rates almost twice that for other women, and rates of rape and sexual assault were 2.7 times higher than those for the general population. Of the violent crime victims with disabilities surveyed, nearly one in five said they believed they were targeted because of their disability.

Republican opponents accused Democrats of committing legislative blackmail by attaching the measure to the defense spending bill. A number assailed the measure as “thought crimes” legislation, contending that it could lead to the prosecution of a pastor delivering sermons against homosexuality if one of his church members committed a hate crime.

Related posts here.

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

Report: People with disabilities four times more likely to be crime victims

From the [UK] Guardian:

Urgent action is needed if a “hidden catastrophe” of violence and hostility towards disabled people is to be tackled, says a damning report today from the [UK] Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

The report paints a bleak picture of disabled people’s experience of physical and verbal abuse and reinforces persistent warnings from disability campaigners that the problem has not been taken seriously enough.

… “Violence and hostility can be a daily experience … so much so that many disabled people begin to accept it as a part of everyday life,” the report says. “Disabled people – including those who have not experienced such behaviors directly – are all too often forced to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it, thereby limiting their own lives.

Among the report’s conclusions:

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