Customer Reviews

Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People With Disabilities: The End of Silent Acceptance?

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It isn't easy to encapsulate the enormous scope and import of this book in a short review. It is a seminal work on what its title states - a treatise on those who have always been every society's ideal victims. The work includes comprehensive chapters on the history of such abuse, explanations on how it can flourish away from public consciousness, the factors that contribute to it and threaten it, and suggestions for change. The author had many years' personal experience working in an institution for developmentally disabled adults, and is the director of the Developmental Disabilities Center at the University of Alberta, where he is also a professor of educational psychology.

Note added 5/8/06: This book is now extremely rare because it is out of print, very few copies are circulating, and very few people seem to want to get rid of their copies. Over the last 2 years, I've seen offers for it go from $100 to over $750 for a used copy. If you can afford it, it's far beyond well worth it (especially if you're an institutional buyer). This is the definitive book on abuse of people with developmental disabilities. It is incredibly thorough, researched and referenced. It is also the first comprehensive book on this topic, to my awareness - I have searched WorldCat (a catalogue of many libraries across the world) and have found nothing like it.

"Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities. The End of Silent Acceptance?" provides the reader with a real insight into the "helping world" of people with disabilities. The author does not just speculate on the issues of violence and abuse, he provides statistics that should make those employed in the human service industry ashamed. I would highly recommend reading this book regardless of your field or profession. I would hope that this book would inspire people to initiate and make changes in both the individual live's of people with disabilitis and the systems governing their services.