Hidden in plain sight
Inquiry into disability-related harassment
Contents
Hidden in plain sight
Inquiry into disability-related harassment
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Part 1: About the inquiry
Why this inquiry?
About the Commission
The remit of this inquiry
The definition of disability-related harassment
Terms of Reference
The number of people who are disabled
The legislative framework
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995
The Disability Discrimination Act 2005
The Equality Act 2010
Public sector equality duty
Equality duties in Wales
Criminal law
The European Convention on Human Rights
The Human Rights Act 1998
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The Autism Act 2009
The policy framework
Antisocial behaviour
Hate crime
Adult protection
Bullying
How we conducted the inquiry
Methodology
The evidence
Part 2: Ten cases
1. David Askew
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
2. ‘The case of the vulnerable adult’
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
3. Keith Philpott
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
4. Shaowei He
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
5. Christopher Foulkes
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
6. Colin Greenwood
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
7. Steven Hoskin
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
8. Laura Milne
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
9. Michael Gilbert
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
10. Brent Martin
What happened
The response
Prosecution
Review process
Lessons learnt
Practice
Training and guidance
Changing attitudes
Investigation
Partnership working
Outcomes
Recognising risk
Part 3: The wider problem
Introduction
The context of harassment
First reactions
Telling someone
Forms of harassment
Damage to property
Exploitation, theft and fraud
Cyber-bullying and cyber harassment
Sexual violence and harassment
Bullying
Antisocial behaviour
Domestic violence
Physical violence
Institutional abuse
Prevalence
Data gaps
Likelihood of becoming a crime victim
Fear of crime
Impact of crime
Experiences of harassment
Where harassment takes place
Out and about
Close to home
In the home
School or college
Public transport
Accessible facilities
Shops, cinemas, restaurants, clubs and other leisure venues
Workplace harassment
Perpetrators
Harassment from family members and partners
Social deprivation
Perceived motivations for harassment
Impact
Reporting harassment
Not recognising harassment incidents
Embarrassment or shame
Low self-esteem
Concern about the process being stressful
Reporting harassment to public authorities
No confidence that public authorities will take them seriously
Low expectation of a sympathetic hearing from public authorities
Low expectation of having access needs met
Negative past experiences of dealing with public authorities
Anxiety about reprisals or other unwelcome consequences
Self blame
Uncertain outcomes
Experiences of reporting to public authorities
Good experiences of reporting
Bad experiences of reporting
Reporting issues and respondent subgroups
Initiatives to make reporting easier
Recognising and recording harassment
Multi-identity issues
Part 4: Responses to harassment
Introduction
Why should agencies take action?
The public sector equality duty
Schools
Integration and inclusion
Bullying
Local government
Positive attitudes
Antisocial behaviour
A new mandatory power of possession for antisocial behaviour
Safeguarding
Housing providers
Healthcare providers
Safeguarding and adult protection services
‘No Secrets’ and ‘In Safe Hands’
‘Vulnerable adult’
Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007
Safeguarding and justice
Serious case reviews
Public transport operators
Reporting levels
Understanding the problem
Good practice
The police and the prosecution services
Reporting and recording
Preventing escalation
Recognition
Charging framework
Positive response
The courts
The law
Incitement
Schedule 21
Justice for victims
Understanding perpetrators
Representations and understanding of disability
Partnership responses
Inspectorates and regulators
Part 5: Conclusions
Manifesto for change
Seven core recommendations
Targeted recommendations
National Governments
The criminal justice sector
The police
Prosecution services
The Courts, National Offender Management Service (NOMS)and local authorities in Scotland
Local agencies and partnerships
Local authorities
Transport providers
Housing providers
Health and social care
Education
Regulators and inspectorate bodies
In summary
Appendix 1: The Equality and Human Rights Commission and our inquiry powers
Appendix 2: Draft Terms of Reference for our Inquiry into the elimination of disability-related harassment
Appendix 3: Responses to consultation on the Draft Terms of Reference
Appendix 4: Final Terms of Reference
Appendix 5: Definition of harassment within the context of employment in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995
Appendix 6: Disability Equality Duty, Disability Discrimination Act 2005
Appendix 7: Public Sector Equality Duty, Equality Act 2010
Appendix 8: Sentence uplifts
Appendix 9: Relevant Articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Appendix 10: Methodology
Appendix 11: Breakdown of responses to the call for evidence
Appendix 12: Organisations giving evidence to the formal hearings sessions
Appendix 13: Membership of the External Advisory Group
Appendix 14: Disability-related harassment questionnaire sent to public authorities
Appendix 15: Duties and powers under the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007
Appendix 16: Organisations providing evidence to hearings investigation specific cases
Appendix 17: Improvements made by agencies
Appendix 18: Article 16 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Appendix 19: Disability Facts and Figures from the Office of Disability Issues
Glossary
Contacts
Acknowledgements
This inquiry has benefited from the generous contributions of many individuals. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is grateful to all those individuals, disabled people’s organisations, voluntary organisations, inspectorate bodies, permanent secretaries, government departments and public and private authorities who have given evidence to the inquiry.
We are grateful also to colleagues and members of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Disability Committee and Advisory Group for their guidance during the course of the inquiry. The inquiry would not have been possible without their collaboration. We are also grateful to Katharine Quarmby, author of ‘Scapegoat: why we are failing disabled people’ for her support and work on stakeholder engagement.
Thanks to all the interviewees drawn from a wide field who gave their time to be interviewed, and to Independent Social Research for their research contributions.
Particular thanks goes to the friends, families and survivors of disability harassment who were generous enough to share their experiences with us.
Foreword
by Mike Smith, Lead Commissioner for the Inquiry, Equality and Human Rights Commission
Having grown up as a disabled person myself, I am used to my fair share of discriminatory behaviour: people treating you as though you are stupid; talking to the person with you instead of to you; overtly treating you less favourably. All of this can be unpleasant, but is it harassment? Probably not, but there have been other times in my life when I most definitely have been subject to harassment.
The most serious case was a period over about three months in the 1990s, when I lived alone in a block of flats on a smart, tree-lined avenue. I regularly had ‘NF’, ‘cripple’ and swastikas painted on my front door. I had wooden stakes pushed under my front door at night, and the ramp for my wheelchair moved. I had offensive graffiti painted on my bedroom window while I slept.
I called the police several times, and each time they just told me to ignore it and paint my front door again. It was only after about the fourth or fifth time that I was lucky enough to get someone who took the situation seriously. For the next two nights officers sat in my hallway, waiting to catch the perpetrator. They installed security TV and panic alarms. When he finally struck again, including torching the garages, half a dozen officers surrounded the place and caught him.
I didn't acknowledge that I had been targeted because of my disability until several years later. And despite the perpetrator being caught red-handed by police, the case never went to court.
Despite all of my personal and national experience of disability issues, nothing could have prepared me for the journey that we have travelled during the 18 months of this inquiry, and the horrendous things some disabled people have experienced. In the worst cases, people were tortured. And apparently just for fun. It's as though the perpetrators didn't think of their victims as human beings. It's hard to see the difference between what they did, and baiting dogs.
The really serious cases catch the headlines. But what about the constant drip, drip, nag, nag of the so-called ‘low-level’ harassment that many disabled people face on a daily basis. It ruins their lives. They don't have the confidence to go out. It undermines their ability to be part of society. It makes them behave differently.
For me, two things come out of this inquiry that are far more shocking than the 10 cases that we cover in more detail, awful as they are. The first is just how much harassment seems to be going on. It's not just some extreme things happening to a handful of people: it's an awful lot of unpleasant things happening to a great many people, almost certainly in the hundreds of thousands each year.
The second is that no one knows about it. Schools don’t know how many disabled pupils are bullied; local authorities and registered social landlords don’t know how many antisocial behaviour victims are disabled; health services don’t know how many assault victims are disabled; police don’t know how many victims of crime are disabled; the courts don’t know how many disabled victims have access to special measures, what proportion of offences against disabled victims result in conviction or how many of these offences result in a sentence uplift; and the prisons don’t know how many offenders are serving sentences for crimes motivated by hostility to disabled people.
And why? How can we have created a society where no one appears to be seeing what's happening. As one of my colleagues on the inquiry said, when we were young we were told not to stare at the disabled person. So no one is.
OK, that's not strictly fair. Over the last couple of years the number of people being convicted of ‘disability hate crime’ offences has gone up. Some parts of the system are making a real effort. But last year the police only recorded 1,567 cases of disability hate crime. It's probably a drop in the ocean, compared with the high proportion of disabled people reporting experiencing disability-related harassment. We need a step change in reporting and recognition.
Over the last 30 years disability activists have developed the social model of disability. It says, put simply, the thing that's ‘wrong with you’ should be referred to as your impairment. This might be a physical condition, a sensory one, a mental health issue, etc. But it is not your impairment, in itself, that disables you. Instead it is society's response to you and your impairment: the way we build the environment; the way we construct our attitudes to what is ‘normal’; the way we think people should behave.
A wider understanding of this model will, I believe, help us understand why some of this harassment happens in the first place, and why we also don't deal with it well.
As human beings, we are not very good at dealing with difference. We’re also pretty concerned about good health. Most people, if they are honest with themselves, are pretty uncomfortable about disability. Every day, people say things like ‘I hear you are having a baby, do you want a boy or girl?’, the response being, ‘I don't mind, as long as it's healthy’. Or if some accident or health misfortune happens to someone, others indicate they would rather be dead than have that happen to them.
On top of that, there are societal attitudes and laws that tell people to treat disabled people differently: you can be excluded from being a company director, you can be prevented from doing jury service; you can be aborted much later – in 2010 the total number of abortions due to suspected disability was up 10 per cent on the previous year; you're not allowed to sit on certain seats in aeroplanes, or go to certain public places, because you will be a health and safety risk to others. People with mental health issues can be forced to take medication to keep everyone else ‘safe’, or if they refuse, be locked up. As disabled people, we even have different toilets. Something as fundamental as going to the loo, and we are separated rather than make regular toilets accessible.
Some people say they don't know how to act because they've never come across a disabled person. How can that be, when 21 per cent of the population are disabled in some way, according to government figures? Well, they probably will have done. But many of the people they know who are disabled will not choose to identify as such, or even if they do, keep it to themselves.
As a society we exclude disabled people from the mainstream – making them live in special homes, educating them in special schools, shut away from the rest of us. It's done under the pretext of ‘we think it's best for them’. But is it really? If you educate disabled children in separate settings, how are they to know how to integrate into society properly when they reach adulthood? And if non-disabled children grow up alongside disabled children, surely they're going to perceive them as different. If you have never come across someone with autism, how are you expected to know how they communicate or how you communicate with them? It seems to me that educating disabled children separately just stores up problems for the future for all of us.
So we don't really feel comfortable about disability, we are taught to think of disabled people as different, and are told to feel sorry for them. I personally think this is a significant part of the reason why, as a society, we have failed to recognise the nature and scale of the problem of disability-related harassment. Throughout the inquiry there seemed to be a collective denial that this sort of thing could be happening. It's as though people are thinking ‘we are supposed to feel sorry for these people, so why would anyone be deliberately horrible to them?’ Maybe it just makes us too uncomfortable, thinking that might be the society in which we live.
Despite the above, I did not think it is all doom and gloom. We came across some great examples of good practice. Throughout the report we highlight many of them. Appendix 17 includes many examples of areas where good practice has been developed where previously things have gone wrong. It is often said that disabled people know best what works for them. Good public authorities know this is true, and work effectively with disabled people and their organisations to achieve better outcomes.
This inquiry has already started the process of change. In many evidence sessions, I asked what we could say that would help drive the process of change. Many said they didn't need to wait for our recommendations, and just talking to us had already motivated them to take action. Others have promised new or revised guidance once this report is published.
The sheer depth and breadth of evidence that we've taken has given us a unique perspective. It was only by taking such a broad view that we were able to see the full extent of the issue and come to our conclusions.
It enabled us to see how the impact of decisions in one policy area affect another. Social services often award care and support based on quite limited criteria around an individual's ‘vulnerability’, and whether or not someone needs physical assistance to bathe or get dressed. Many local authorities allow support for ‘one significant social encounter a week’. They say they can't afford more, but think how socially isolated that will leave many people – a common thread of our inquiry was that people were socially excluded. The design of transport and housing often prevents some disabled people from getting out and about, including getting to a place of employment. So then the disabled person has no choice but to live on benefits, and is then labelled a scrounger and a burden on the rest of society. People think of choice of school as parental choice, but it is only when you step back that you can consider the wider impact on our society of segregated education. There are many, overlapping, vicious circles.
We also found that some of the measures that are meant to help might inadvertently be making things worse. The ‘No Secrets’ guidance has resulted in criminal offences such as theft or fraud not being dealt with as crimes, and professionals focusing on vulnerability and protecting the disabled person (perhaps by moving them), rather than dealing with the perpetrators. It didn't occur to them that this would infringe the disabled person's human rights.