Blog post by Sara Rocha, representative of the European Council of Autistic People and member of EDF Women’s Committee.
The European Council of Autistic People (EUCAP) developed a project on violence against autistic people, funded by the European Women’s Lobby, to understand the experiences of violence autistic people have in their life, including gender-based violence.
The project developed a survey, that was translated and shared in several languages, to understand how common different types of violence are, if the violence was reported, and if so, what the experience of the person was of reporting it. It was also asked if they accessed support service, from mental health to shelters, and what they think of the service capability to support them.
On International Women’s Day, March 8, we presented the preliminary survey results.
Some results of the survey
Regarding our survey, from 259 autistic people that answered:
- 169 identified themselves as female (65%), 40 as male (16%), and 50 as non-binary and other genders (19%).
- Around 42.5% of our sample identified themselves as LGBTQIA+, 20.8% as gender non-conforming, and 8.5% as migrant.
- Around 20.1% of our participants were at some point institutionalised but were not necessarily still in an institution.
- In our sample, 90% of women and 91% of non-binary people received their diagnosis after 18 years-old, compared to 58% of men, showing a clear influence of gender on access to diagnosis.
- Only one person (0.38%) indicated never being exposed to any type of violence, with harassment, followed by psychological and emotional violence, verbal violence, and bullying being the most common types of violence in our sample, with more than 90% being exposed to it. Most rates were close throughout gender, except sexual violence, with women (80.4%) and non-binary people (78.4%) being more exposed to than men (35%). Although the 2014 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights report indicates that 1 in 20 women in the EU have been raped, 1 in 3 of the autistic women who responded to the survey had been raped. They were also the most exposed to domestic violence, both by a family member (76.3%) and by a partner (55%), followed by non-binary people (74% and 50%, respectively) and men (62.5% and 37.5%, respectively).
- Violence in the medical and institutional setting was also common in our participants, with almost 30% of the participants being overmedicated at some point in their life, 6.5% being hospitalised at a psychiatric facility against their will, and 8% being exposed to harmful treatments for autism.
In future studies, we need a better perspective of intersectionality from groups that were not as represented in our study as we would like, such as BIPOC people (3.1%), refugee or asylum seeker (0.4%), Roma (0%), and autistic people that are chronically institutionalised, have learning disabilities or are nonspeaking and are harder to reach with these survey format. It is also important to study specific types of violence that are not normally investigated regarding autistic people, but showed up in our sample, such as human trafficking.
eBook “Stories beyond violence: personal stories of autistic people as victims of violence”
For this project, we also opened a call for personal short stories on the topic, now published as an eBook “Stories beyond violence: personal stories of autistic people as victims of violence”, with sixteen stories on very different experiences of violence, including sexual violence, medical malpractice, the use of restraint, psychiatric confinement, and many others. Personal stories help to bring context and awareness to the pervasiveness and impact of these experiences in autistic people.
It is important to recognise the structural and societal barriers that decrease the ability to prevent, report, and limits access to support services for victims, which should take into consideration the accessibility needs of autistic people, and we believe that this project was a first step to show the urgency of more autistic people’s voices to be included when talking about violence, especially gender-based violence. However, more research, with larger samples, needs to be developed. The full results will be published soon in a report.
The materials developed on this project will be available for any EUCAP member organisation to translate into their language to advocate on this topic. We hope that the results of the project will provide useful information for autistic people’s organisations and communities, policymakers, and legislators, as well as to bring awareness on the accessibility needs of autistic people on reporting and victim’s support services to prevent and improve support of autistic victims of violence.
You can see more information on the full project on EUCAP website.