Skip Navigation

Child sexual abuse and disabilities

Power in PreventionWeb Conference: Child Sexual Abuse and Disabilities

Thursday, January 16, 2014
11am Pacific Time, 2pm Eastern Time

Although children with disabilities are three times more likely to be sexually abused, these children have not garnered the same attention of policy makers, the media or community organization. There is also an alarming lack of primary prevention programs available to this population. In this important web conference, the speakers will provide insights into this emerging issue as well as some innovative programs and collaborations.

Part of the Ending Child Sexual Abuse web conference series.

Hosts: Joan Tabachnick and Cordelia Anderson

Learning Objectives:

  • Increase understanding of the impact that disabilities may have in increasing the risk for sexual abuse.
  • Identify three barriers to implementing policies to enhance a child’s safety within an organization.
  • Articulate three actions you can take to ensure a child’s safety if she or he has a disability.

Materials:

Presenters:

Sandra Harrell, Project Director, Vera Institute of Justice’s Accessing Safety Initiative

Sandra Harrell

The Vera Institute of Justice’s Accessing Safety Initiative is a federally funded program that helps communities across the United States improve their response to women with disabilities and Deaf women who have experiences domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking. During her tenure at Vera, Sandra Harrell has worked closely with the 50 communities, helping them build multi-disciplinary collaborations to ensure that survivors with disabilities get the support they need. She has also delivered trainings on violence against women with disabilities at multiple venues across the country, co-authored reports on the topic, coordinated roundtables and meetings to expand the field, and most recently Sandra has expanded her work through a project with the Ms Foundation for Women focusing on sexual abuse of children with disabilities.

Keith Jones, President and CEO, SoulTouchin’ Experiences

Keith Jones

As an African American community activist and entrepreneur with cerebral palsy. As a strong advocate for independent quality living in the community, Keith Jones has participated actively in various issues that face people with disabilities. These areas include, but are not limited to housing, education, and voting access. Mr. Jones is also extremely active in multi-cultural, cross-disability education and outreach efforts and has performed trainings (including train the trainer) with the purpose of strengthening outreach efforts to provide services and information to people with disabilities. Mr. Jones works to not only educate the disability community about enhanced community living, but also the community at large. Mr. Jones holds a strong desire to get the disability community more involved in the issues that concern their own lives. Mr. Jones provides outreach support in relationship to the arts and independent living skills. Mr. Jones has been recognized for his emerging leadership by the state of Massachusetts and President’s Commission for Employment for People with Disabilities. Also, Mr. Jones is the Disability Law Center’s 2011 Individual Leadership Award.

Meg Stone, Executive Director, IMPACT Boston and Project Director IMPACT:Ability

Meg Stone

IMPACT Boston is an abuse prevention and self-defense training organization. In that capacity, Meg Stone serves as the Project Director of IMPACT:Ability, an abuse prevention program focused on people with disabilities that is supported by a matching grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In this capacity she leads the organizational abuse prevention efforts of Triangle, a Boston-area disability service and advocacy organization. Meg has led IMPACT Boston since 2005 and in that time she has led the development of abuse and violence prevention and risk reduction programs in schools, homeless shelters, disability service agencies, and domestic violence organizations. Meg has over 20 years experience in domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy which includes family court advocacy, training emergency department nurses to document domestic violence, and working the night shift in an emergency shelter.

11 responses to “Child sexual abuse and disabilities”

  1. Is there another way to register? My office web is blocking the registration and it’s difficult to get that turned off. Thanks for any information.

  2. The test worked okay (parts i and ii). I just can’t sign up. The web-blocker is seeing it as a chat.

  3. I am trying to register for this webinar but it says the webinar is currently full. Is that possible?

Leave a Reply