Disability and Sexual Violence

Disabled people experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence, yet their experiences remain marginalised within research, policy and practice. This book offers a groundbreaking analysis of disabled victim-survivors' journeys towards recovery and justice. Drawing on original research with disabled victim-survivors from England and Wales, Andrea Hollomotz and Leah Burch challenge explanations that locate vulnerability within individual impairment. Instead, they demonstrate how vulnerability is socially produced through the intersecting effects of disablism, sexism, social exclusion, information inequalities and unequal access to support and recognition. The book explores experiences of coercive control, disability-specific violence, help-seeking and criminal justice, while also examining the importance of care, belonging and peer support in recovery. Bringing together disability studies, criminology, feminist theory and an ethics of care, it develops a new framework for understanding justice as procedural, relational, collective and transformative. Making a major contribution to debates on disability, violence and social justice, this book offers an important agenda for creating more accessible, inclusive and responsive systems of support.