People with an intellectual disability: under-reporting sexual violence

Purpose People with an intellectual disability are much more likely to be sexually violated and the violation is less likely to be reported. Despite this being high-lighted at least 3 decades ago and improvements in both safeguarding and national reporting processes, under-reporting remains a problem. This paper explored under-reporting alongside prevention possibilities using safeguarding alerts raised in a Community Learning Disability Team within a UK NHS trust. Design/methodology/approach Using a combination of authentic but anonymised case vignettes and descriptive data drawn from the safeguarding team, under-reporting was examined through the lens of an ecological model. Safeguarding alerts raised in a particular year were compared with the number expected if all (estimated) cases of abuse were disclosed and reported. Findings Only 4.4 per cent of expected abuse cases were reported to the team, which is lower than the reporting level the authors had expected from the literature. There is evidence in the literature of the under-reporting of sexual assault for all kinds of people. Arguably, the implications of under-reporting for PwID are even more traumatic. Originality/value This paper explored the extent to which the previously documented under-reporting concern remains an issue. Certainly eye-balling safeguarding compliance data in the NHS organisation we worked in led us to a concern that reporting might be even lower than implied in the literature. This together with a renewed spot-light on sexual violence (e.g, NHS England, 2018) led us to decide that it was timely to re-examine the problem.