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From MSNBC (July 1):
Caught on tape: Hospital patient left to die
Emergency room staffers ignored 49-year-old woman who fell to the floor
NEW YORK - City hospital officials agreed in court Tuesday to implement reforms at a psychiatric ward where surveillance footage showed a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers failed to help for more than an hour...
...Read more.
(View the uncaptioned video)
State Senator Eric Kearney (D-Cincinnati) introduced a bill that would expand the state's hate crimes legislation to include protections for people with disabilities.
The Senate bill was introduced as a result of a brutal attack in February against Ashley Clark, a teen with intellectual disabilities who was born without limbs. The attack occurred in Clark's rural home when she was tied up, beat with a baseball bat, robbed, her hair cut off, and her prom dress destroyed.
Hate crime laws allow for additional punishments for crimes if they can be shown to have been motivated by animus to a particular group of people.
If the proposed legislation were already in place, arguably, the attack against Clark would qualify as a hate crime because disability seems to be a main reason she was targeted.
Ohio is one of 23 states that do not include disability as a part of their hate crime legislation.
From The Telegraph (May 31):
March rallies support for disabled
By STEPHANIE KISZCZAKALTON - They caused quite a scene marching down East Broadway early Saturday afternoon.
Some were on foot, in wheelchairs, in vehicles or on motorcycles, with police cars at the front and back of the line. They proudly displayed signs and chanted as they journeyed up the hills of Sering Avenue.
"What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!" they yelled.
People along the way stood at their front doors to watch the commotion, while others peeked out of windows. Motorists honked in support and others pulled off to the side of the road to watch.
The group of nearly 30 people had gathered to honor 29-year-old Dorothy Latrice Dixon, who died from her injuries after being shot with a pellet gun, beaten and scalded over several weeks' time. She died in January. Dixon, who had moved to Alton from Quincy, Ill., was six months pregnant and developmentally disabled...
...Read more.
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For Immediate Release:
For Information Contact:
May 28, 2007 Sharon Lamp (847) 803-3258;
(847) 894-4907 cell
Amber Smock Ambity@aol.com
End Violence Against People with Disabilities Now!
Disability Rights Activists to Gather in Alton, Illinois
(Chicago) On Saturday, May 31, disability rights advocates from Illinois and the St. Louis, Missouri, area will gather in Alton for a community memorial in the name of Dorothy Dixon, a 29-year-old woman
with a developmental disability who was found dead due to domestic violence at the end of January. The memorial, organized by Feminist Response in Disability Activism (FRIDA), will be hosted at 11 am CST
at IMPACT Center for Independent Living at 2735 E. Broadway in Alton. The service will end with a procession to the house where Ms. Dixon died.
The story of Ms. Dixon's slow death over two months, allegedly at the hands of her housemates, shocked the disability community. Alton police found over 20 objects allegedly used to torture her, and at her death she was found cold and half naked, wearing only a sweater. She was six months pregnant at the time. Police believe the motive for her death may have been domestic conflict concerning her monthly
SSI disability check. At least one of her six alleged abusers also has a developmental disability; four are age 18 or younger. Ms. Dixon's surviving child weighed 15 pounds at the time, aged one.
People with disabilities, especially those with developmental disabilities, are historically more likely to become victims of physical violence, as well as emotional and financial abuse. Women and people who are LGBTQ are also more likely to become victims of violence. FRIDA and our allies are determined not to let this incident pass without bringing attention to the broader issues of violence damaging our community.
While Centers for Independent Living and grassroots groups like our ally, ADAPT, advocate for home and community-based supports so people with disabilities can live in the community, we need those supports to be safe supports. Our community needs better tools to protect ourselves from violence. "No one knows what it's like to go through that unless it's being done to you," says Veronica Martinez of
FRIDA. "If someone was planning to do that to me, I would like to be prepared."
Feminist Response in Disability Activism
115 W. Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60610
Contact: Monica Heffner, (312) 404-6021
www.ourfrida.org
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READ MORE:
Trackback to previous articles about the Dorothy Dixon torture and killing (article 1), (article 2)
From Fox News / Associated Press (May 7):
Computer Hackers Attack Epilepsy Foundation Web Site With Barrage of Pictures, Flashing Images
SAN FRANCISCO —
Computer attacks typically don't inflict physical pain on their victims.
But in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images.
The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons...
...Read more.
From FoxNews.com (April 24):
Bush Heckler Arrested After Punching Wheelchair-Bound Girl
A man heckling First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna outside the 92nd Street Y was arrested after he punched a wheelchair-bound girl whose parents had told him to shut up, authorities said Wednesday...
...Read more.
From KDKA (CBS affiliate in Industry, PA) - April 22:
Local Special Needs Student Beaten On School Bus
INDUSTRY, Pa. (KDKA) ― Cell phone video recorded by students captured the beating of a special needs student in Beaver County on a school bus.
A 17-year-old student allegedly beat a 16-year-old student unconscious on a Western Beaver school bus last week.
"It was just shocking and appalling that students would videotape it and that someone would even think about hitting someone who was disabled," Linda Lamantis, a parent, said...
...Read more.
From CNN / Associated Press (March 21):
Disabled pregnant woman used as target practice
ALTON, Illinois (AP) -- Banished to the basement, the 29-year-old mother with a childlike mind and another baby on the way had little more than a thin rug and a mattress to call her own on the chilly concrete floor.
Dorothy Dixon ate what she could forage from the refrigerator upstairs, where housemates used her for target practice with BBs, burned her with a glue gun and doused her with scalding liquid that peeled away her skin.
They torched what few clothes she had, so she walked around naked. They often pummeled her with an aluminum bat or metal handle.
Dixon -- six months pregnant -- died after weeks of abuse...
...Read more.
TRACKBACK:
Read a previous story on Dorothy Dixon's tragic murder.
From The Leader-Post (March 18):
Latimer wants new jury trial
By Don Butler
March 18, 2008OTTAWA -- Robert Latimer landed in Ottawa Monday with a message that may surprise some of his supporters: he's OK with the law that sent him to prison for killing his severely handicapped daughter Tracy.
Facing the media at Ottawa Airport after flying in from Saskatchewan to begin serving day parole at a halfway house, Latimer made it clear he's not in Ottawa to campaign for euthanasia or a "right to die" law.
Even the murder law that dealt him a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 10 years "isn't that bad," he said, if the courts would allow a jury to determine whether what he did was right or wrong...
...Read more.
READ MORE:
See a previous story on Robert Latimer's parole.
Excerpts from Pantagraph.com (Bloomington, Illinois):
Teens charged in murder of mentally disabled pregnant woman
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
By Shane Graber
ALTON -- A small white A-frame house on Hillcrest Avenue here housed for weeks a torturous environment of beatings, scaldings, even BB gun shootings that eventually led to the death of a mentally disabled pregnant woman, officials, neighbors and family members said...
...
Riley had been taking Dixon’s monthly Social Security check that she presumably received as a result of developmental disabilities, Hayes said...
...Terri Brandt, 27, said her next-door neighbors were always making a racket. She said she witnessed Riley punish Dixon by making her run naked, and that Riley would pour boiling water and use a hot glue gun on Dixon. Riley had baby monitors in all the rooms to keep tabs on everyone, Brandt said...
...Read the entire article.
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