Disability Awareness: Understanding the Intersection in Our Work

By Charissa Flege
Senior Attorney, National Training and Consultation, Victim Rights Law Center

We were beginning to see our lack of access as a problem with society, rather than our individual problem. From our perspective, disability was something that could happen to anyone at any time, and frequently did, so it was right for society to design its infrastructure and systems around this fact of life.   

-Judith Heumann, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist (2020). 

When I started my career in gender-based violence work a decade ago, I attended hundreds of hours of training on gender-based violence, trauma-informed representation, and various legal practice areas. I don’t recall a single discussion about working with individuals with disabilities during any of those hours. No one discussed the disability experience and the robust intersections between experiences of disability and sexual assault. (According to the CDC, people with disabilities are 4 to 10 times more likely to be victimized than people without disabilities.) As someone who lives with complex, invisible disabilities, I would have remembered if they had. 

I should have known about survivors’ disability barriers when I was their advocate. I, a person with disabilities, did not realize how unaware of their disabilities I was and how I could have leveraged disability laws to protect their housing and employment. I did not consider how the agencies I worked with could better bridge the gap between survivors with disabilities and the services they needed, even as I acquired new disabilities that significantly affected all aspects of my life. The knowledge I have now drives me to highlight the realities of navigating our systems with a disability. I want gender-based violence attorneys and advocates to have the information I wish I had then.  

Later in my career I worked at a disability legal advocacy program. At this program, I did my first deep dive into the disability experience and disability barriers. Working with and for disabled individuals all day, every day opened my eyes to a new world view. When my career shifted from anti-violence work to disability legal work, I realized that probably more than 80% of my former DVSAS clients experienced disabilities that either made them targets for gender-based violence or made their ability to access essential services more difficult.  

The intersections between disability and survivor services became clear. Many clients had acquired disabilities due to violence they had experienced, or their disability was exacerbated by the violence. They were unseen by members of the anti-violence communities. They sometimes relied on the people who hurt them for their survival and were unwilling to report and put their care in jeopardy. Many of my clients with disabilities were not believed when they talked about that violence because of their disability…if they could talk about it at all. Clients with disabilities who were integrated into society were expected to not only manage their disability and to keep a job, get services, find housing, but also to get themselves in the doors of gender-based violence service providers. These barriers to service make folks with disabilities extremely vulnerable to victimization and less likely to seek or obtain help after they are victimized.  

The intersection between sexual violence and disability cannot be ignored. We, as lawyers and service providers, need to better understand the full range of disability experience and invest deeply in providing access and dismantling disability biases. If we do not make this investment, survivors will continue to be excluded from and harmed by our survivor support services.  

Charissa Flege (she/her) is a Senior Attorney with the Training and Technical Assistance team. She came to VRLC in 2024 after several years of doing direct legal services with immigrants, survivors, and individuals with disabilities. She is a passionate advocate for creating systems that work for everyone, and especially for transforming legal services and systems to be more accessible and trauma-informed.