Victim Advocacy, Criminal Justice and Violence Prevention Resources

  • Activating Change: Ableism and Violence: A Plain Language Guide: This resource was created to be a plain language guide to ableism and the ways that ableism contributes to violence against people with disabilities. It is designed to help self-advocates understand ableism and its connection to violence against people with disabilities.
  • Abuse of People with Disabilities: A Silent Epidemic (YouTube): Abuse of People with Disabilities: A Silent Epidemic is a public service video produced by the Board Resource Center (www.brcenter.org) to encourage people with disabilities to speak up about abuse. Molly Kennedy and Kecia Weller are well known peer advocates in California who are taking a stand to stop abuse. Please join them by sharing the video with your network.
  • Activating Change: Activating Change works to end victimization, criminalization, incarceration, and institutionalization of people with disabilities and Deaf people. Learn more about their work and resources.
  • Coercion Related to Mental Health and Substance Use in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence: A Toolkit: This toolkit provides trauma-informed guidance on integrating questions about mental health and substance use coercion into routine mental health and substance use histories and into in-depth intimate partner violence (IPV) assessments in primary care and behavioral health settings.
  • Crime Against Persons With Disabilities, 2009-2014 – Statistical Tables – Bureau of Justice Statistics: Presents estimates of nonfatal violent crime (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) against persons age 12 or older with disabilities.
  • Crime Against Persons With Disabilities, 2009-2015 – Statistical Tables – Bureau of Justice Statistics: Presents estimates of nonfatal violent crime (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) against persons age 12 or older with disabilities.
  • Disability Justice Resource Center (DJRC): The DJRC has been created to help members of the legal community better understand the complex issues related to justice for people with disabilities, particularly people with developmental disabilities. It also is designed to help the legal community identify and eliminate biases against people with disabilities. An online resource for legal professionals, continuing legal education courses, law schools, students and otdedicated to protecting the rights of people with developmental disabilities.
  • End Abuse of People with Disabilities Website: This website is managed by Activating Change (formerly Vera Institute). As awareness about the rates of violence against people with disabilities and Deaf people grows, so does the need to connect the practitioners, organizations, government agencies, communities, and individuals that make up the growing movement to end abuse of people with disabilities and Deaf people. This website is a place to connect with others engaged in this work, to access the latest resources and research from the field, and to advance the thinking around intervention and prevention.
  • Explore Access: Access to Victim Services: People who are deaf, blind, who use wheelchairs and other mobility devices, people with intellectual disabilities, chronic illnesses, dyslexia, and speech-related conditions all share the common experience of being disabled by the design and perspectives of society. When we see disability in this way, we recognize that, as people who design and deliver services and processes, we can be a part of the problem of exclusion or a part of the solution of inclusion. We hope that this toolkit will provide you with the resources you need to create more inclusive victim advocacy services.
  • Funding Streams for Victim Services (PDF): This handout provides information about the various funding streams that support victim service organizations.
  • National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability: NCCJD will serve as a national clearinghouse for information and training on the topic of people with I/DD as victims, witnesses and suspects or offenders of crime.
  • National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health -Trauma-Informed Legal Advocacy (TILA) Project: The Trauma-Informed Legal Advocacy (TILA) Project offers guidance on applying trauma-informed principles to working with survivors of domestic violence in the context of legal proceedings. Building on the accessibility, culturally relevant, domestic violence- and trauma-informed (ACDVTI) framework developed by NCDVTMH, the TILA Project offers strategies that make these principles relevant to the work of legal advocates as well as lawyers who represent survivors.
  • Policy and Advocacy in Action Podcast – Episode 27 (YouTube): This podcast, entitled Dismantling Racism and Ableism – Centering the Margins, is sponsored by the National Center on Domestic Violence and features an interview with Renee Lopez, a disability rights’ activist about the importance of centering the voices of people of color with disabilities in the work for social justice and collective liberation.
  • Supporting survivors of sexual assault: Here’s 10 things that helped me: Self-advocate and survivor James Meadours explains the 10 things that helped him heal after being sexually assaulted.
  • Training and Collaboration Toolkit -Serving Sexual Violence Victims with Disabilities: This toolkit offers guidance for service providers on working collaboratively to integrate accessible services for sexual violence victims with disabilities into the existing social service delivery system. The purpose is to provide the information and resources needed to begin the process of collaboration and cross-training among relevant agencies. The toolkit’s focus is on adult and adolescent victims with disabilities.
  • Vera Institute of Justice – Measuring Capacity to Serve Survivors with Disabilities: The Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Victimization and Safety developed a practical performance indicator tool to meet the growing need for straightforward and cost-effective ways for disability organizations, domestic violence programs, rape crisis centers, and programs that address domestic and sexual violence to track their progress in serving survivors of domestic and sexual violence who have disabilities.
  • Webinar on Addressing Sexual Assault Against People with Disabilities (YouTube)The webinar by the Administration for Community Living will highlight the prevalence of sexual assault in the disability community. It will focus on the perspectives of sexual assault survivors with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) who will discuss their experiences, the barriers they encountered when seeking support, and the recommendations to improve access to care and justice. The target audience is broad and includes organizations serving people with I/DD, organizations serving survivors of sexual violence, and victim advocates and prevention specialists, plus partners and grantees from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other government agencies.

Financial Exploitation

General Prevention Resources

  • Sexual Violence – Center for Disease Control (CDC): This page on the CDC website offers a wealth of information on sexual violence and prevention.
  • Sexual Violence Prevention: Beginning the Dialog (PDF): While this publication does not specifically address people with disabilities, it is an excellent overview of general sexual assault prevention principles and the framework of the socio-ecological model. Many directors of disability programs have found this publication helpful in understanding the issues and have been able to apply the information in their settings.
  • Socio-Ecological Model: The following link has information about applying the four-level socio-ecological model in various settings and uses the model to explain the potential benefits of violence prevention strategies.
  • Disability Justice and Violence Prevention Resource Hub: The Disability Justice and Violence Prevention Resource Hub (indisabilityjustice.org) shares and centers the voices of people with disabilities. The contributors, all neurodivergent or Disabled people, are compensated to lend their voices and creativity to the anti-violence field. The Hub features stories, poetry, photography, sculptures, spoken word, interviews, paintings, editorials, and fiction writing. We also share tools and resources, like our webinars and accessible evaluation, that we create collaboratively with people with disabilities and other stakeholders to prevent sexual violence against people with disabilities.

Deaf and Disability Community Resources

  • End Abuse of People with Disabilities: This page on the End Abuse website focuses on prevention and offers resources to strengthen prevention.
  • Language Access Planning for Deaf People: A Toolkit: This toolkit by Activating Change contains links to various resources that have been developed to provide victim service providers and allied professionals with a process and practical strategies to remove barriers that prevent Deaf victims and survivors from accessing services and create more accessible and culturally responsive services. 

Healing Resources

Healthy Relationships

Policy Change

  • A Congressional Insider’s Guide to Influencing Disability Policy: The purpose of this guide by Bobby Silverstein is to provide persons with disabilities, family members, their advocates and other members of the public with suggestions for improving the effectiveness of their interactions with policy-makers.
  • Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children: The goal of this report is to advance understanding and promote the rights of parents with disabilities and their children. The report provides a comprehensive review of the barriers and facilitators people with diverse disabilities—including intellectual and developmental, psychiatric, sensory, and physical disabilities—experience when exercising their fundamental right to create and maintain families, as well as persistent, systemic, and pervasive discrimination against parents with disabilities.

Self-Advocacy

  • Envisioning the Future – Allies in Self Advocacy: This YouTube video provides an overview of the state of the self-advocacy movement and the regional summits held in 2011 and 2011.
  • Leaders with Developmental Disabilities in the Self-Advocacy Movement: This project explores the life stories of thirteen leaders in the self-advocacy movement and their perspectives on key issues and leadership challenges.
  • Learn How to Become a Peer Supporter of a Person who was Abused: We are teaching these classes to help self-advocates become “peer supporters”. Peer supporters gain information and tools during this course that will help them close the gaps between the person who was hurt and the programs that can help them.
  • Classes About Sexual Violence: Peer To Peer-Bridging the Gap through Self-Advocacy offers two resources to use to teach 4 classes about Sexual Violence. Here is a guide for leaders with disabilities on how to teach the classes. There is also a workbook to be used by people taking the classes.
  • Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE): The mission of SABE is to ensure that people with disabilities are treated as equals and that they are given the same decisions, choices, rights, responsibilities, and chances to speak up to empower themselves; opportunities to make new friends; and to learn from their mistakes.
  • Green Mountain Self-Advocates has lots of resources for self-advocates on abuse and related topics. 

These resources have been gathered and/or created through with support from the following grant-funded projects: