The sad part is that children with disabilities are far likelier to be abused:
http://www.domesticviolenceservices....-children.html
There have been four studies with large samples that have addressed the question of whether children with disabilities were at higher risk for child maltreatment. Even though these studies varied in methodology and sample, the results have been remarkably consistent: children with disabilities are at increased risk for abuse or neglect compared with their non-disabled peers.
Based on analysis of the second National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-2), approximately 21.3 per 1,000 children without disabilities are maltreated each year, compared with 35.5 per 1,000 children with disabilities (Westat, 1993). The authors concluded that children with disabilities were 1.7 times more likely to be maltreated than children without disabilities. In examining these figures, Sullivan and Knutson (1998) estimate that these figures are probably low since Child Protective Workers were asked to make the diagnosis of disability, and they are generally not qualified to do so. Moreover, these findings do not include extra-familial abuse since information about abuse outside the family is in police records rather than in state child protective service records.
Embry (2001) conducted a retrospective study of 770 deaf adults who were also deaf as children. Forty-five percent of the sample reported some type of abuse, 19% reported caregiver physical abuse, 30% reported residential staff physical abuse, 18% reported sexual abuse, and 9% reported physical neglect. Interestingly, parent communication method did not predict any type of maltreatment. However, poor communication between parents and children increased the risk of neglect, and fair communication quality increased the risk for caregiver physical abuse.
Sullivan and Knutson (1998) merged hospital records for a local children’s hospital with the records of the Department of Social Services, the child abuse Central Registry, the Foster Care Review board, and municipal and county law enforcement
agencies. From this, they drew a sample of 3001 maltreated children, 792 were current or former residents of a hospital that specialized in treating maltreated children. These children were compared to 880 non-abused controls. They found that disabilities were twice as prevalent in the maltreated hospital group, which is consistent with the hypothesis that disability increases the risk of maltreatment, and maltreatment increases the risk of disability (the study design did not allow them to determine whether disability or maltreatment came first). In almost all cases, physical abuse and neglect was intrafamilial regardless of disability type. The majority of children with disabilities were maltreated under the age of five. Children with more than one disability were at higher risk of physical and sexual abuse, and the severity and duration of both types of abuse was greatest for those children with multiple disabilities.