Personal Safety Programs for Children with Intellectual Disabilities

As the severity and extent of child abuse among children with intellectual disabilities is widely recognized, increased attention is now being directed toward personal safety programs. There is, however, relatively little research on teaching personal safety skills to these children. The purpose of this study was to review studies on personal safety programs for children as well as adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and to present future directions for research on such programs for children with intellectual disabilities. Child abuse is a serious problem. In 2005, an estimated 12.1 per 1,000 children were found to be victims of child abuse, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse as well as neglect (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2007). Unfortunately, children with intellectual disabilities are at even greater risk for child abuse. A large body of research has consistently demonstrated a relationship between intellectual disability and child abuse. For example, Sullivan and Knutson (2000) investigated the incidence of child abuse among an entire school-based population that included all 50,278 children during the 1994/95 school year in Omaha, Nebraska. They collected child abuse registry records, foster care records, law enforcement records, and school records to obtain evidence of child abuse and information about disability status. The results showed that children with intellectual disabilities were about 4.0 times more likely to be the victims of child abuse than their peers without disabilities. In particular, these children were 4.0 times as likely to be sexually abused, 3.8 times as likely to be physically abused, 3.8 times as likely to be emotionally abused, and 3.7 times as likely to be neglected as children without disabilities. In another study, Verdugo, Bermejo, and Fuertes (1995) assessed child abuse among children with intellectual disabilities who were living in institutions in Spain. Through a questionnaire completed by professionals (doctors, social workers, psychologists), the researchers found that 11.5% of children with intellectual disabilities had been abused or neglected, while only 1.5 % of children without intellectual disabilities had experienced child abuse. It was estimated that the rate of child abuse was about eight times higher among those with intellectual disabilities than among those without intellectual disabilities. Similarly, many other studies have confirmed the strong relationship between intellectual disability and child abuse with findings indicative of either a high occurrence of child abuse among children with intellectual disabilities (e.g., Ammerman, Van Hasselt, Hersen, McGonigle, & Lubetsky, 1989; Benedict, White, Wulff, & Hall, 1990) or an overrepresentation of children with intellectual disabilities within abused or neglected samples (e.g., Bonnier, Nassogne, & Evrad, 1995; Kvam, 2000; Sandgrund, Gaines, & Green,