My mom was raised on a farm in Ohio. She had a favorite expression whenever she heard about a weaker person being bullied by a stronger person or persons. “That's just like the royal order of the chicken!” she would quip. I heard this saying many times throughout my childhood. As I approached adolescence I asked her, “Why do you call it that, Mom?”
She explained, “On the farm chickens will peck the daylights out of a weaker chicken. Sometimes causing it to leave the safety of the roost or chicken coop, and it is not unusual the other chickens will peck the weaker one to death.”
A dreadful situation, even for chickens! But consider, how much more so when it relates to human beings. Am I saying our society is not much better than the society of chickens found in a barnyard? Recent research makes this comparison too similar for comfort.
Prime Targets for Abuse
Abuse of the disabled, elderly, women and children has become every day news topics. Such accounts once were appalling; many times received with shock and a sense of horror and indignation. Sadly today, the reaction often times appears to be as if these crimes are to be expected. As if it is all just part of every day life. The reaction is made with a sense of indifference and apathy. Perhaps there has been too many occurrences that we as a society have become as insensitive to them as if we were under novacain.
The disabled, physically challenged, learning impaired, physically limited, or anyone handicapped physically, mentally, or educationally is often the prime target for abuse.
This article, the first of several on abuse, will deal with the disabled.
The Role of Society's Attitude
Why are the disabled prime targets for abusive treatment and crimes? It often has to do with the attitudes society has dictated to us about how we should perceive individuals that are different in any way at all from those who are considered normal.
In a narcissistic society, we are constantly bombard with the values of “wholeness”, “strength”, “beauty”, “attractive”. And the definition for all of these words renders anyone with a disability of any kind to be “undesirable” or “unacceptable”.
Thus the vast majority of “normal” individuals shun those who appear different from the norm. And those with a mentality for crime see the handicapped as an easy target for robbery and rape.
While this is a crime; most of us would quickly assert also a moral wrong, a large percent of abuse suffered by disabled individuals is at the hands of their caregivers.
While recent records indicate there is a large percent of abuse incidents that are committed by caregivers, it is most disturbing that these statistics may only represent a fraction of the total number of disabled individuals victimized by their caregivers.
Why do these individuals suffer in silence? The reasons fall into several categories:
- Fear. Often a disabled person will be afraid of being abused again by the caregiver
- Lack of Knowledge. Not knowing from who to seek help; where to seek help; and how to make the contact.
- Transportation. Many of the disabled do not have access to dependable transportation.
- And they may lack the means of obtaining it.
- Guilt. The victim often “plays down” the incident by justifying: “I deserved to be treated this way, what I did/didn't do displeased my caregiver.”
Types of Disabilities
For some, the mention of a person being disabled, immediately registers visions of that person being blind, or confined to a wheel chair, due to being unable to walk. Having interfaced with the blind as a teen in my junior high school, and also later as a tutor/peer counselor in special education at the community college I attended, blindness and being paraplegic is only one very small segment of the world of disabilities.
There is a very wide variety of conditions which constitute a person being legally considered “disabled”. However anyone with any type of disability seems to be “fair game” or the “weaker chicken” for bullying, abuse, and victimization.
Incidentally, victimization doesn't only include physical abuse such as sexual assault, but also financial exploitation, and emotional abuse.
Another dilemma anyone with any type of handicap often experiences (and this is also a form of victimization) is the prevailing attitude of the majority of society to shun them. How many times have you seen someone hold a door open for a person in a wheel chair, or for someone using a cane to indicate they are blind? And how about yourself - do you speak to someone who is obviously handicapped in the same way, as you would to a person with no visible handicap? Sadly it has been my experience (due to a back condition leaving me physically limited) that those who should show the most compassion and the least partiality - fellow Christians, yes often members of the same church - demonstrate the most graphic amount of prejudice and indifference.
