In August last year, I had the opportunity to participate in the World Congress of Rehabilitation International, a quadrennial gathering of disability researchers and advocates.

It was held for the 21st time last year in Quebec City, and one of its accomplishments was the creation of the first international network of women with disabilities.

There are over 300 million women with disabilities all over the world. Based on the estimates of the World Health Organization for developing countries, in the Philippines there are around 4.5 million such women or 5 percent of the population.

Persons with disabilities, in general, suffer from neglect and anonymity. Opportunities and access to basic services, including education and employment, are scarce or non-existent. Women, in general, are discriminated against and ill-treated by the chauvinistic societies we live in.

Women with disabilities, particularly, suffer multiple forms of discrimination and ill-treatment.

I was able to participate in last year?s congress because of a simple statistical profile I did on one of the faces of ill-treatment of women with disabilities -- sexual abuse. The Canadian International Development Agency, through the organization Institut de réadaptation en déficience physique du Quebec, supported my entire trip so I could share the results of my analysis with the participants coming from all over the world. Many of those present during my presentation came from Africa, the Americas and Scandinavia; they had experiences similar to ours in their home countries.

I am leading the Catholic Ministry to Deaf People (CMDP), a non-profit organization with an abuse-prevention and treatment program for the deaf, which has been operating for over 10 years now. Since the inception of the program, around 200 deaf persons have sought psychological or legal intervention from the organization.

It was from among 74 closed cases of sexual abuse that the analysis was done to find a pattern. Organizations like ours need to understand how sexual abuse takes place and the circumstance and profile of the offenders, the victims -- and in 15 percent of the cases, the accomplices. In our experience in the area of sexual abuse, prevention activities and programs are the more sustainable way to deal with the problem. The more we understand the circumstance of abuse, the better the prevention programs.

As in cases of sexual abuse of hearing (non-deaf) persons, most of the offenders are persons known to the deaf victims (70 percent). In 16 percent of the cases, the offenders are relatives of the victim, and in 38 percent, the offenders are their peers (friends, classmates, schoolmates or neighbors of around the same age). The abuse happens in places frequented by the victim, in the victim?s house (16 percent), in the boyfriend?s house (8.3 percent), and in school (5.5 percent). Although abuses perpetrated by strangers (30 percent) in some random places (37 percent) do happen, most of the cases happen in places we consider safe and are committed by persons we trust.

The odds that the offender is deaf as contrary to the offender being hearing are even, or almost the same. This is one of the results of the study that the deaf participants of the congress found perplexing. But this is especially true in the case of date-rape (19 percent of the cases). The blurring of the lines between abuse and non-abuse, as found in 7 percent of the cases, is especially more pronounced in the cases of rape or sexual abuse taking place in the context of a romantic relationship, where the ?no? of the girlfriend is mistaken as ?yes.?

The problem with sexual abuse cases of women with disabilities, especially among the deaf, is that there is no national structure or ongoing program for their prevention or for justice when abuse occurs. There is no evidence of national awareness that these abuses are taking place.

In late 2007 and early 2008, for example, we tried to ask for data from the Philippine National Police on crimes committed against persons with disabilities, in general, and the deaf, in particular. The data were not readily available. And, after years of filing cases of abuse, we still find the local police precincts without a mechanism for an abused deaf girl to directly report a crime, or even for the other groups of persons with disabilities. Do our precincts even have ramps for wheelchair users?

The multiple forms of discrimination that women with disabilities face in this country seem to be embedded in our socio-political structures and systems.

What more if we talk about girls with disabilities? Sixty-three percent of the cases involved girl-victims. The problem with the cases of the deaf girls is that they suffer the most horrible forms of sexual abuse. Of the cases of gang rape, 13.7 percent were committed against deaf girls. One of eight incest cases involved deaf girl-victims. Seventy-one percent of abuse cases perpetrated more than twice also involved girl-victims.

Ninety-three percent of the victims, both deaf women and girls, belong to classes D and E of our society.

One is really in a rut when one wakes up with a disability in this country, especially when one is a woman or girl. Discrimination and ill-treatment are not only on the level of relations between persons, of how people view, regard and treat a woman with disability. It is also on the level of structure, of establishments, of systems, of governance.

Now that we are celebrating ?National Women?s Month,? I think we should begin to measure our progress toward gender-equality by how far we have gone to include women with disabilities in our programs, services and in our everyday lives.

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