Rethinking Sexual Abuse, Questions of Consent, and Intellectual Disability

Abstract

This article explores sexual abuse for individuals with intellectual disabilities using a case of a young woman with an intellectual disability who was sexually abused by her peer mentor. This article deconstructs the complex notions of competence as denying individuals' legal recognition of their capacity for sexual expression. The potential for sexual abuse is used as a disqualifier that demands compensation to counter the risk. This compensation takes the form of harm reduction and protectionism. Additionally, the article questions the usefulness of pity as a response to cases of sexual abuse. I argue that pity, as an emotional response, perpetuates unequal power dynamics between the individual who experiences abuse and those who describe, report upon, and support the individual. Most damaging perhaps is that, when individuals with intellectual disabilities, women especially, are seen as being vulnerable or at risk for sexual abuse, the perceived vulnerability acts as a mechanism to deny their sexual desire.Keywords Intellectual disability . Sexual abuse . Competence . Consent . Sexual agency . Legal and ethical issues of sexuality . Cognitive ableism This article explores how to reimagine and reframe legal and journalistic narratives of sexual abuse of women with intellectual disabilities 1 by using crip theories that reveal gendered, heteronormative, and ableist assumptions about sexuality and pleasure. I examine the American case of Kalie McArthur, a young, white woman with an intellectual disability who was sexually abused by her white male peer educator, in order to consider how stories about "victims" in court cases like this can expose and dismantle interlocking systems of oppression existing in situations that result in abuse and assault. 2 McArthur's case and the discourse around it are instructive because of the ways in which notions of pleasure, competence, morality, and disability are used to frame the woman as a vulnerable victim and the peer educator as a predator. I argue that the notion of pity, unproblematized in feminism, limits the necessary respect for disabled women in abuse cases (Razack 1998). The utility of making assessments of competency based on intellect is also discussed in order to further deepen feminist disability studies' analyses of the interplay among gender, disability, and sexuality. Finally, this article discusses possible ways to theorize sexuality for people with intellectual disabilities mindful of (but not restrained) by the high prevalence of sexual abuse and complicated notions of consent.In Looking White People in the Eye, Sherene Razack wonders how feminists can "talk about the social context of women with disabilities without reifying the othering that marks this context in the first place" (1998, p. 51). More explicitly, Razack asks us how we can discuss sexual 1 The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities defines intellectual disability as "a disability characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in a...

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