An exposition of sexual violence as a method of disablist hate crime

Disability hate crime is an area of “academic, campaign and Government interest” yet understanding this is in its infancy. It incorporates targeted violence, abuse, harassment and public disorder towards disabled individuals, communities and their environments. Sexual violence has been identified as a dominant method of disability hate crime towards disabled women and underscores the importance of evaluating the intersections of both gender and disability when attempting to understand the experiences of hate crime victims. Consequently, an application of intersectionality to researching disablist crimes encourages the consideration of multiple, overlapping and complicated experiences of risk and victimisation. This chapter is based on empirical evidence from a broader project looking at disabled people’s experiences of hate crime, here focusing specifically on the ways in which disabled women have experienced hate crime. It starts by evaluating current literature on disability hate crimes against women, before outlining the methodology involved in the empirical research process. Intersectional analysis of disabled women’s experiences will illustrate the difficulty in categorising individual experiences through a single strand of hate crime. Evidence from disabled women exposed experiences of historical and repeated sexual violence which can be conceptualised through hate crime and gendered violence. The context and circumstances surrounding disabled women’s experiences will be considered, as well as the responses by the criminal justice system. The chapter concludes by positioning these findings within wider academic discourses around violence against women.