NGO Is Fighting for Disabled Mexicans Right to Live in Their Communities, Rather Than Institutions Naomi Larsson - The Guardian
go to original March 10, 2017

Patients at a psychiatric hospital in Mexico City. People with mental illness have been pressing for better treatment and understanding. (Adriana Zehbrauskas/The New York Times)

For decades, disabled children and adults living in institutions worldwide have suffered abuse of all kinds – from deprivation and solitary confinement in miniature cells, to sexual abuse and forced sterilization.

Now a charity which has documented this abuse for more than 20 years is bringing a landmark legal case against the Mexican government, with the intention of laying down a new line in international law.

Throughout their years of research, Disability Rights International (DRI) has found sickening abuse in donor, state-funded and private institutions for people with disabilities across the world.

...The institutions that house children and adults in Mexico have been one of DRI’s principal focuses since 2000. Their first groundbreaking report documenting abuse in the Samuel Ramirez hospital in Mexico City contributed to the landmark 2006 UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

In 2014, a two-year investigation into the state of facilities for people with disabilities in Mexico City found residents were sexually abused, locked in cages, left permanently in cribs, and overall detained in “dehumanizing conditions”, as the charity described it. “People with disabilities have the right to stay in society and not be locked up,” said Eric Rosenthal, executive director of DRI. In Mexico he witnessed “effectively no community services; a total system of segregation”.

The case that DRI is now bringing centers on children and adults detained at Casa Esperanza institution in Mexico City. Casa Esperanza featured on a list compiled by Mexico City authorities of facilities for people with disabilities that were particularly abusive that was passed to DRI in May 2014 by an anonymous source.

In repeated visits to Casa Esperanza in 2014 and 2015 carried out by representatives from DRI, who were open about their intentions to investigate the facility, 37 people were found to be held in “dangerous, violent, degrading and unhygienic conditions”.

In one interview with the director of the institution in 2014, which is recorded on video, he states that the forced sterilization of some of the women in the home is standard policy as a precautionary measure against pregnancy, in reference to the risk of sexual abuse (a resident told DRI that a repairman had raped her). “They’re not protecting them from getting raped, they’re protecting them from getting pregnant,” said Rosenthal.

Interviews conducted by DRI with patients at Casa Esperanza who were able to communicate disclosed harrowing tales of assault. Five women revealed they were being sexually abused by a relative of a senior staff member, and a workman.

Read the rest at The Guardian

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