Sexual abuse and intellectual disability: How people with intellectual disabilities and their professionals identify and value the experience.

Abstract

Sexual abuse is a problem that affects, especially, people with intellectual disabilities. In order to cope with this, the role of professionals is essential for both the identification and the prevention and treatment of this problem. However, there are few studies focus on what extent the professionals’ evaluation agree the real experience of the people with intellectual disability. For this reason, the present study analyses risk perception and experience of sexual abuse suffered by people with intellectual disability, compared to the identification and evaluation of professionals who attend them. For this purpose, 154 adults with intellectual disabilities and 16 professionals completed the DAS, the ECS and the ECS-R respectively. The results show how sexual abuse is a reality for people with intellectual disabilities although they do not always manifest receiving, sometimes, rejection by their close people. Moreover, gender differences are shown, in which women suffer sexual abuse and its consequences more frequently. Professionals only realize about some part of this situation and they attribute greater vulnerability to women and those who have already suffered a prior episode of sexual abuse. In this sense, it would be essential to have programs for the detection and treatment of sexual abuse, considering that professionals are a positive reference for people with intellectual disabilities

Keywords

• discapacidad intelectual
• abuso sexual
• género
• percepción de riesgo