Children with disabilities are at a higher risk of abuse and neglect, a new study says.
The findings, from Children with Disability Australia released Tuesday, found disabled children at a threefold risk of experiencing extreme types of abuse like physical assault or being locked up in rooms without windows, compared to children without any disabilities.
Such types of incidents often remain unexposed due to the inability of children to report the complaint or the lack of support.
"Some of the things that are talked about in the report range from quite extreme physical assaults of children who are locked in rooms without windows, to children who are pinned down by teachers who've been trained in behaviour management from trainers who are martial arts trained rather than behaviour management specialists," report author Dr. Sally Robinson from Southern Cross University's Centre for Children and Young People, told ABC.
"However, the fact remains that we know that kids with disabilities experience abuse and neglect at over three times the rate that children without disability do."
These findings come at a time when out of the 53.9 million school-age children aged between five and 17 in the United States, 2.8 million have disabilities, and one in seven children are affected with a developmental disability.
According to National Child Abuse Statistics, nearly six million children are abused and five children die per day across the country. Child abuse can leave both a mental and physical impact on children. Children who experience abuse at an early age are more likely to take drugs and abuse their own children in adulthood.
Apart from abuse and neglect, previous studies have shown that children belonging to this category are more vulnerable to bullying.
According to a study published earlier this year, children with observational disabilities like language and hearing impairments or mild mental handicaps are the highest victims of bullying and more likely to bully others at school, as a kind of revenge.
