by Christina Rainville, Esq. THE CHILDREN’S CORNER


Protecting Children with Disabilities Requires Systemic Change in Our Legal System


The Bennington County State’s Attor-


ney’s Office began prosecuting sexual abuse cases for children with disabilities six years ago on a promise to an eight year-old girl who had been repeatedly sexually as- saulted by multiple abusers but could not speak about it. We promised her we would prosecute her case and put her offender in jail so she would feel safe, and we moved forward despite the challenges caused by her communications disability. Six years lat- er, what was, at best, a hopeful experiment on behalf of one little girl has become a de- termined commitment to all our disabled children, and to our community as a whole. Studies all over the world show that


children with disabilities are at greatly in- creased risk of sexual and physical abuse. Last summer, the World Health Organiza- tion reported that children with disabilities are 3.6 times more likely to be victims of physical violence than their non-disabled peers and 2.9 times more likely to be vic- tims of sexual violence.1


Our numbers in


Bennington County follow that trend: well over 50% of our child sexual abuse cases involve child-victims with disabilities, and nearly 100% of our male sexual abuse vic- tims are disabled. Disabilities that affect the child’s ability to report—like autism, intellectual disability, deafness and other communications disabilities—top the list. Prosecuting cases for children with dis- abilities poses unique challenges, but we have learned the disabilities the children were born with are just the beginning of the difficulty. The overwhelming majority of our sexual assault victims develop post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is a disabling neurological response to trauma. PTSD makes trying these cases extreme- ly difficult, as many children simply cannot appear in court. In addition, a large percentage of our child-victims who are removed from their homes due to physical/sexual abuse and are placed in foster care develop Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), which is an- other disabling neurological response to trauma. RAD makes a child unable to have normal attachments to caregivers, and makes the child especially difficult to work with for the lawyers.


By the time we get to trial, it is com- mon for us to be working with a child who has an underlying disability, and, on top of that, has developed full-blown PTSD and


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RAD. The efforts required to support these children through the court process can be overwhelming.


Historical Failure to Prosecute Only Leads to More Victims


We have seen, unfortunately, what hap- pens when these cases are not prosecuted. We have one case now where a man in his forties was accused of sexually assault- ing four vulnerable teenage boys in the 1990s. The boys all had significant learn- ing disabilities. The defendant gave alco- hol to two of his victims until they passed out in his car, and they both woke up to being sexually assaulted. Two other simi- lar reports came in around the same time, with two more boys. The defendant was charged for the assault on only one of the four boys. He was then allowed to plead nolo contendere—not even guilty—to a misdemeanor lewd act. He never spent a single day in jail. The four victims never had their day in


court, and they suffered immeasurably. One of his victims committed suicide. An- other became addicted to drugs and has been in and out of jail ever since. The new case is much like the four cas-


es in the 1990s. The defendant, now six- ty years old, was charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting a fourteen year-old boy in his car. This boy, like the others, has sig- nificant learning disabilities. And now, he has also developed a terrible case of PTSD. His suffering is immeasurable.


The most tragic thing is that it never should have happened. With four victims in the 1990s, this perpetrator should nev- er have been free to victimize more vulner- able children.


Every time we have a case with a victim with disabilities, and we think about how challenging the case will be, or we ques- tion whether the jury will understand, we move forward. We move forward because we have too many cases where defen- dants abused disabled children, got a slap of the wrist or no charges at all, and then found more victims. Every time we decide not to prosecute a case because the child is too disabled, we send a message to de- fendants that they are free to abuse again. And we just cannot be doing that anymore.


Changing Laws As we work to better protect these chil-


dren, we have learned that existing laws can provide barriers, and this needs to change.


Mandated Reporter Laws for Special Education Children We were shocked to learn that Vermont’s mandated reporter laws inadvertently did not cover the schools that serve Vermont’s most disabled children: independent schools. Vermont had laws that required mandated reporting and mandated-report- er training in schools, but the law inadver- tently excluded independent schools. Independent schools are where the most


severely disabled children are placed in Vermont. Vermont’s school for deaf chil- dren is an independent school; and all of the residential programs for the most se- verely disabled children are independent schools. Unfortunately, by inadvertently excluding independent schools from the mandatory reporting and training require- ments, the law eliminated the protections for the children who needed them most. In Bennington County, there are ten in- dependent schools where children were not protected by the mandated reporter laws. We changed that. We worked with our local legislators. We wrote the bill that was presented to the legislature. We put together a team of state police, prosecu- tors, and victim advocates who testified before the state House and Senate com- mittees that were considering the bill. Our coalition carried the day. The bill passed. The governor signed it. Now our children are all protected, pursuant to 33 V.S.A. § 4913.


Extending Statutes of Limitations This year, we focused on Vermont’s stat- ute of limitations for sexual abuse cases. Under the existing law, the limitations pe- riod expired when the child turned twenty- four, or ten years after the crime was first reported by the child. Since we have cases with children who report sexual abuse as young as four, the limitations period could expire when those children turned four- teen.


Clearly, these deadlines needed to be extended. Many of our children are bat- tling PTSD in their teens and twenties and


THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • FALL 2013 27


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