To stop the abuse of disabled people, we know what needs to change

It has only been a few days since the disability royal commission’s final report landed, and already the horrifying violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation against disabled people that was uncovered has disappeared from view.

Those who perpetrate this violence — disability support workers, prison guards, people working in hospitals and schools, police, doctors, nurses — and all those who purport to love and care for us have disappeared with it. The abuse we experience seems to arrive from outer space.

Instead of focusing on the abuse victims, media coverage continues to concentrate on the imagined fretting of non-disabled people, that they may have to change a tiny part of their lives in order to ensure disabled people are kept safe.

The disability royal commission handed down its 12 volumes on Friday, after four and a half years of public and private hearings, submissions and research into what is happening to disabled people and how the abuse can be stopped.

In its third volume, the commission clearly set out the scale of the violence against us. More than half of us have experienced physical or sexual abuse — a far higher rate than experienced by non-disabled people (38%). We are more than twice as likely to be hurt by our intimate partners. The report details the data and research, listing statistic after statistic, known for years, about how much we are harmed by those around us.

Different disabled people have different experiences of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. Women with disabilities are more likely to be sexually assaulted; people with a head injury or an intellectual disability have the highest rates of violence; First Nations peoples with disabilities experience all the disadvantages of both First Nations and disability communities.

The royal commission is also explicit about what the risks are for disabled people experiencing violence and abuse, including being socially isolated and the need for high levels of support. The report makes clear that “institutional and segregated settings may increase the risk of social isolation and barriers to making complaints”.

None of this is unknown, yet it makes for sobering reading, seeing all those statistics, that data, that research, showing so clearly what is happening to far too many of us.

The commissioners made 222 recommendations, unanimous in nearly all of their findings, calling for change across all levels of government and in the community. They were unified in saying that disabled people in this country are not equal and are disproportionately harmed, and that this must be addressed. But of course, what is happening to us — these statistics, the stories in the reports, and the overwhelming consensus on what needs to change — isn’t what’s being reported on. Instead, the media has focused on the seven recommendations where the commissioners had conflicting views.

When it came to group homes, chair Ronald Sackville and commissioner John Ryan sat through a week of horror in public hearing three, listening to evidence about the devastating abuse of mostly people with an intellectual disability by those who were paid to support them, and still decided that group homes should continue. They sat through public hearing after public hearing into specific group homes, run by disability services providers, where disabled people were hurt, assaulted, neglected and injured, again, by the very people paid to support them.

Yet they still couldn’t add their names to Recommendation 7.43, which called for a roadmap to phase out group homes within 15 years, with Ryan not recommending a timeline and Sackville not saying anything.

The same happened with education. Despite clear evidence of the links between being educated separately from peers and thus going on to a separate life in work and housing, a number of public hearings, and evidence from young people with disabilities about the harms done, the chair and commissioners Ryan and Mason still couldn’t support the recommendation for change over the next few decades.

In employment, despite hearing evidence from disabled people about the impact of being paid a few dollars an hour, being bullied at work, and living in poverty, not all commissioners agreed on the need for change.

Recommendation 7.32, supported by the majority of commissioners, called for an end within 10 years to paying disabled people as little as $2.90 per hour for their work, as well as an end to insisting people with disabilities work separately from everyone else. Commissioners called for Australian Disability Enterprises, formerly sheltered workshops, to open up to people with an intellectual disability, who, the commissioners suggested, should have more opportunities to work in the same places everyone else does.

These areas of disagreement are hardly radical or new proposals. The disability rights movement, including people with an intellectual disability, have been demanding to be seen as equal, to live and work in the community alongside everyone else, for decades.

We are hurt and harmed in the hidden places, in the dark, and by the systems and people who want to keep us there. The disability royal commission has been clear about what needs to change so we can be free from this scourge of abuse and violence. The work now begins to realise those changes.