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Introduction
Acts of violence can affect anyone. But some people, such as those with disability, may be especially vulnerable to experiencing violence.
What is violence, abuse and intimate partner violence?
Violence
Violence can take many forms. Two main types are:
- Sexual—behaviours of a sexual nature carried out against a person’s will, such as sexual assault (for example, rape, indecent assault and attempts to force a person into sexual activity) or threat of sexual assault.
- Physical—incidents involving the use or threat of physical force with the intent to harm or frighten a person, such as physical assault or threat of physical assault.
Violence can be perpetrated by strangers or by someone the person knows.
In this section, violence is defined as any incident involving the occurrence, attempt or threat of physical or sexual assault.
Assaults may have occurred in conjunction with a robbery and includes incidents that occurred at work, at school or overseas. In this section, sexual assault excludes unwanted sexual touching, which is defined as sexual harassment.
Abuse
Abuse can also take many forms. In this section, abuse refers to physical and sexual abuse of a child under the age of 15 years by an adult. These are defined as:
- Sexual—any act involving a child in sexual activity beyond their understanding or contrary to currently accepted community standards.
- Physical—any deliberate physical injury (including bruises) (ABS 2017a).
In this section, abuse excludes discipline that accidentally resulted in injury, emotional abuse, and physical and sexual abuse by someone under the age of 18.
Intimate partner violence
In this section, intimate partner includes current partner (who the respondent lives with), previous partner (who the respondent lived with), boyfriend/girlfriend/date and ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend (who the respondent never lived with). Intimate partner violence includes sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner.
In Australia, it is estimated that:
- more than one-third (37%) of adults who have experienced at least 1 incident of violence after the age of 15 have disability
- close to half (46%) who have experienced abuse before the age of 15 have disability (ABS 2017b).
Adults with disability are more likely to experience violence than those without disability. Of adults with disability, an estimated:
- 1 in 2 (47% or 2.7 million) have experienced violence after the age of 15, compared with 1 in 3 (36% or 4.5 million) without disability
- 1 in 5 (20% or 1.1 million) have experienced abuse before the age of 15, compared with 1 in 10 (11% or 1.3 million)
- 1 in 17 (5.8% or 332,000) have experienced violence sometime in the last year, compared with 1 in 19 (5.2% or 656,000)
- 3 in 4 (74% or 2.0 million) of those who experienced violence have experienced multiple incidents of violence, compared with 6 in 10 (62% or 2.8 million) (ABS 2017b).
Personal Safety Survey
Data in this section are sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) 2016 Personal Safety Survey (PSS). This survey collects information from men and women aged 18 years and over about:
- since the age of 15—sexual and physical violence, current and previous partner violence and emotional abuse, and stalking
- before the age of 15—sexual and physical abuse, and witnessing violence between a parent and their partner
- lifetime—experience of sexual harassment, and general feelings of safety (ABS 2017a).
In the PSS, a person is considered to have disability if they had 1 or more conditions which have lasted, or are likely to last, for at least 6 months and restrict everyday activities. Disability is further classified by whether a person has a specific limitation or restriction and then by whether the limitation or restriction applies to core activities or only to schooling or employment.
The severity of disability is defined by whether a person needs help, has difficulty, or uses aids or equipment, with 3 core activities—self-care, mobility, and communication—and is reported for mild, moderate, severe, and profound limitation. People who ‘always’ or ‘sometimes’ need help with 1 or more core activities are referred to in this section as ‘people with severe or profound disability’.
While the PSS is the best available source of data about the experience of violence and abuse, care should be taken when using it for estimates related to people with disability. Reasons include that:
- It uses the ABS’ Short Disability Module to identify ‘disability or restrictive long-term health condition’. This module is not as effective in identifying disability as the questions used in the ABS’ Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC), and may overestimate the number of people with less severe forms of disability.
- A specific PSS requirement is that interviews are conducted in private. Where a respondent requires the assistance of another person to communicate with the interviewer, proxy interviews are conducted with a household member chosen by the person. The proxy interview only covers the compulsory component of the survey and these data are not released. Questions about sensitive topics from the voluntary component of the survey, including experiences of violence, are not asked in proxy interviews (ABS 2018). Therefore, it is likely that the PSS under-represents those with profound or severe disability. In 2016, approximately 33% of respondents who reported a profound or severe disability, were not included in released data due to the use of a proxy or opting out (ABS 2017a).
- The PSS only collects from private dwellings and does not collect data from people living in institutional care settings.
- The PSS asks about long-term conditions and impacts on daily activities (disability) at the time of the survey, whereas questions on violence relate to either the last 12 months or a person’s lifetime. It is therefore not possible to determine whether a person had disability at the time of experiencing violence. As such, disability should be interpreted as a characteristic of people at the time of the survey, and not at the time of the incident of violence; it is not possible to identify if disability is a risk factor for, or outcome of, experiencing violence; and care should be taken when making inferences for incidents, especially those that occurred more than 12 months ago (ABS 2017a).
Adults with disability, especially those with severe or profound disability, are more likely than adults without disability to experience all types of violence:
- 16% (935,000) of adults with disability have experienced sexual violence after the age of 15, compared with 9.6% (or 1.2 million) without disability
- 43% (2.5 million) have experienced physical violence, compared with 32% (4.1 million) without disability
- 21% (1.2 million) have experienced intimate partner violence, compared with 13% (1.7 million) without disability (Table VIOLENCE.1 and Figure VIOLENCE.1).
Table VIOLENCE.1: Prevalence of violence after age 15(a) for adults(b), by disability status(c) and type of violence, 2016 (%)
Type of violence
|
Severe or profound disability
|
Other disability
|
All with disability
|
Without disability
|
Sexual violence(d)
|
24.0
|
15.2
|
16.3
|
9.6
|
Physical violence(e)
|
43.9
|
43.0
|
43.1
|
32.1
|
Intimate partner violence(f)
|
28.5
|
19.7
|
20.8
|
13.2
|
Total who experienced violence
|
48.8
|
46.7
|
47.0
|
35.9
|
(a) Experience of violence after age 15 (in last year or previously). Includes sexual violence and physical violence.
(b) People aged 18 and over living in households.
(c) Disability status is determined at the time of the survey. It does not indicate whether a person had disability at the time of an incident of violence.
(d) Includes sexual assault and sexual threat.
(e) Includes physical assault and physical threat.
(f) Includes sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by a current partner (living with), previous partner (has lived with), boyfriend/girlfriend/date and ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend (never lived with).
Note: Components may not add to total as people may experience multiple types of violence. A person who experienced sexual and physical violence is counted separately for each type of violence they experienced but only once in the aggregated total.
Source: ABS 2017b; see also Table VIOL3.
Women with disability report higher rates of sexual violence and intimate partner violence than their male counterparts. Men with disability report higher rates of physical violence (Figure VIOLENCE.1). This is also the case for adults without disability, although the rates are generally higher for men and women with disability than without:
- 1 in 4 (25% or 748,000) women with disability have experienced sexual violence after the age of 15, compared with 15% (or 978,000) without disability
- 1 in 14 (6.6% or 187,000) men with disability have experienced sexual violence after the age of 15, compared with 3.9% (or 241,000) without disability
- 2 in 5 (40% or 1.2 million) women with disability have experienced physical violence after the age of 15, compared with 26% (or 1.7 million) without disability
- almost 1 in 2 (47% or 1.3 million) men with disability have experienced physical violence after the age of 15, compared with 38% (or 2.4 million) without disability.