A Silent Epidemic of Abuse

Not many people probably know this, but upon graduating X-Ray school and obtaining my license I had no intentions of actually beginning a career in that profession. I enjoyed the work, liked being a small part in the process of helping people, but with the naivete of a nineteen year old unencumbered by family or responsibilities I decided that it just wasn’t “my calling.”

Instead I spent several months pursuing jobs with the State Department of Developmental Services, in those days still known as the Office of Mental Retardation. Full time employment was hard to find but I had just made up my mind to accept a part time, third shift position at a group home when I was offered three months of work covering the medical leave of somebody that I knew at an orthopedic office. Right about the time that she returned to work a maternity leave offered me another three months at the hospital where I had done most of my training and twenty four years later, I’m still there.

One of my responsibilities before administering potentially harmful radiation to patients is confirming that they aren’t pregnant, a part of the job that’s become easier with new electronic medical records that enable me to sometimes bypass potentially awkward questions by accessing the answers to these questions already given to their attending Emergency Room nurse.

These answers are sometimes frightening, a reminder that I will need to talk to my daughter at a much earlier age than either of us are going to be comfortable with.

Other times the answers are just sad, such as the surprising number of women with high intellectual disabilities that have been implanted with inter-uterine devices.

It didn’t take a large amount of research to figure out why. I’ll admit that I didn’t spend as much time verifying these numbers as I usually do, partly because most articles seemed to be referring back to the same set of studies and partly because to be honest, it made me fucking sick. There is such a wide range in the cognitive abilities of those that would fall under the designation of having intellectual disabilities that I’m sure gathering accurate information is impossible, but the numbers I looked at said that 90% of those with severe handicaps will experience some form of sexual abuse in their lifetimes. 90%

68% of girls and 30% of boys will experience this before their 18th birthday. 97-99% of the abusers in these cases are known to the victim, with the highest percentage being caregivers.

For obvious reasons these cases are among the least reported and the hardest to prosecute, something that these predators surely know and count on. To me this just adds to the cowardly and heinous nature of the act.

I don’t regret the direction that my life has taken but am reminded again of how easily it could have gone in a completely different direction. The care of these most vulnerable among us should be considered a noble profession, with caregivers that are trained, screened and compensated more than they currently are.  A society is judged based on how they treat the neediest of it’s population and we need to be doing a much better job. If a job ever becomes available beating the shit out of those that would take advantage of these poor souls I may just reconsider my current occupation.

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This post was previously published on Thirsty Daddy.

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