Breaking the Silence on Crime Victims with Disabilities in the United States.
Presenters:  Ollie Cantos, John Vaughn, Mary Lou Leary and Beverly Frantz.

OPERATOR:  Okay, speakers, we're going into the main conference now.

SHARON:  Good afternoon, everyone.

OPERATOR:  One moment, ma'am, we haven't switched to the conference yet.  Give 
me just a second.  Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience 
in holding.  We now have our speakers in conference.  Please be aware that we 
have all of your lines is in a listen-only mode.  At the conclusion of our 
speakers' presentation, we will open the floor for questions.  Instructions will 
be given at that time on the procedure to follow if you would like to ask a 
question.  I would now like to turn the conference over to Sharon Finney.  You 
may begin.

SHARON:  Good afternoon, everyone.  Welcome to today's webcast presentation:  
Breaking the Silence on Crime Victims with Disabilities in the United States, a 
joint statement by the National Council on Disability, the Association of 
University Centers on Disabilities, and the National Center for Victims of 
Crime. ILRU is pleased to support this extremely important work of these 
organizations by hosting this webcast announcement.  It is our hope that centers 
for independent living, statewide independent living councils, other disability 
organizations and others involved in addressing the needs of crime victims with 
disabilities will find this information of great interest.

My name is Sharon Finney, and I'm with ILRU.  I'll be moderating the webcast and 
voicing any questions submitted by E-mail to our presenters today.  Before we 
get started, I want to remind you about sending and asking questions.  In order 
to submit a question during the webcast, you can click the submit question 
button at the bottom of your RealOnePlayer screen or simply address an E-mail to 
webcast@ilru.org.  And that is again webcast@ilru.org. 

Please send your questions now or at any point during the presentation today.  I 
will pose your questions to those presenters at the end of their presentation. 
Additionally, if anyone does have technical problems, please call us at 
(713)520-0232 and press 0 for the operator.  This number is both TTY and voice 
capable.

As I said before, today's presentation is Breaking the Silence on Crime Victims 
with Disabilities in the United States.  It is being presented by Ollie Cantos, 
John Vaughn, Mary Lou Leary and Beverly Frantz.  Now I'd like to turn it over to 
Ollie Cantos.  Good afternoon and welcome, Mr. Cantos.

OLLIE:  Good afternoon, Sharon.  And thank you very much. And a warm hello to 
all of you.  Crime victimization is an issue that is important to all of us, 
irrespective of whether or to what extent we happen to have a disability. 
Unfortunately, what has taken place in the past within the disability field is 
an absence of awareness of crime victimization issues.  In order to change the 
ways that things have been done and as a way to move forward in making sure that 
all those within the disability field are made aware of victimization issues, as 
well as to ensure that those within the victim witness system are aware of the 
needs of individuals with disabilities, we have convened this conference call 
webcast which is nothing short of historic.  For the first time in history, 
those within the disability field as well as those within the victim/witness 
community are coming together to address crime victim to address issues across 
the span.  This is critically important because this webcast signals the 
beginning of a dialogue at a broader level than has ever taken place in the 
past.

Thanks to the leadership of the various organizations that have been involved, 
today we are going to continue to expand collaborations. In particular, under 
the leadership of John R. Vaughn, chairman of the National Council on 
Disability, more attention than ever is being devoted by the council to crime 
victimization of people with all types of disabilities.  This is also something 
that will be discussed later during the call.

In addition, the National Center for Victims of Crime has done historic work in 
expanding awareness about the needs of crime victims with disabilities among the 
more than 12,000 victim/witness programs across this nation in communities of 
every size. And in addition, the association of university centers on disability 
has also played a leadership role by convening a working group that consists of 
a number of different organizations and agencies covering and serving people 
with all types of disabilities and individuals of every age.

As a result of these efforts, today these organizations will be discussing with 
all of you the joint statement that has been done. And in addition, at the end 
of the call, there will be an opportunity for people to join in this work 
whether they are members of law enforcement, first responders, those who are 
disability rights activists, as well as social service providers, legislators 
and others.  The implications that will be discussed here are far reaching 
especially considering how disability touches all of us sand safety touches all 
of us as well. And with that, I would like to turn the time over now to John 
Vaughn, chairman of the National Council on Disability.

JOHN:  Thank you very much, Ollie, and I want to thank Ollie Cantos, my good 
friend, for bringing NCD into this collaboration and we're excited about the 
opportunities.  I also want to thank Gill Ruth for hosting this and I want to 
thank all of you for joining us in this presentation today.

The National Council on Disability is an independent federal agency.  We are 
made up of 15 presidentially appointed Senate-confirmed members and we are about 
promoting policies, practices and programs that enhance the lives of people with
disabilities. What we are hoping to be able to do in the coming years with this 
is to foster this initiative as one of our primary goals and objectives and with 
that I'd like to turn it over to the next speaker.

Beverly -- I'm sorry, Mary Lou.

MARY LOU:  Thanks, John.  This is Mary Lou, Leary with the National Center for 
Victims of Crime.  The mission of the National Center for Victims of Crime 
basically is to ensure that every victim of every crime has all the rights and 
the resources that he or she needs to rebuild his life.

We collaborate with a wide variety of partners, including our partners here on 
the webcast today.  And what do we do together?  We provide direct services and 
resources to victims of crime across the country, in part, through our help line 
which is 1800 FYI call.  We advocate public policies that will secure those 
rights and resources that we talked about for victims.  We deliver training and 
technical assistance and we really try to push the envelope and foster cutting 
edge thinking about what impact crime has on the life of a victim and what every 
one of us can do to help crime victim rebuild their life.

One of the important roles of the national center is to try to identify the 
unmet needs of crime victims and collaborate with other partners like you all to 
meet those needs.  And some of our very best collaborators come from our network 
of 12,000 service providers across the country.  Here is one of our partners 
now, Beverly, from A. U. C.D.

BEVERLY:  Hi, this is Bev, and AUCD is a central office member representing 
UCEDD's.  This represents us to the federal government, the constituency 
organizations and agencies.  The mission of the AUCD is to nurture, support and 
assist member programs in their endeavor to enhance the quality of life for 
persons with developmental disabilities through interdisciplinary training, 
exemplary services, technical assistance and dissemination of information and 
research. As a subgroup, we have the disabilities crime action committee, and 
this is a group of about six or seven UCEDD's, Wyoming, Utah, Virginia, North 
Dakota, Virginia, Wyoming, as well as the Ark of California, the U.S. Department 
of Health and Human Services, the National Disability Rights Network and NCIL in 
working with us to address the issues of crimes against people with 
disabilities. And the next person goes to Mary Lou.

MARY LOU:  Thank you.  We've all gotten together and are reaching out to you to 
try to reach the ultimate goal of this partnership which is to foster greater 
public awareness about crime victims with disabilities. Together we want to 
forge a national commitment to better serve this particularly vulnerable 
population.  You might ask how big a problem is victimization?  Well, in 2005 
Americans experienced 23 million violent and nonviolent crimes.  Fewer than half 
of those crimes were even reported to law enforcement.  This translates into one 
crime every five seconds in communities all across this country. John, what can 
you tell us about victimization of people with disabilities?

JOHN:  in 2002, over 50 million people in the United States -- that's almost one 
out of every six -- had a reported disability.  Going a little bit further, as 
you look at those with severe disabilities, you are dealing with something over 
30 million or nearly 11 percent of the population.  This, of course, excludes 
people under age six and in facilities.

For somebody like myself down here in Florida where we are really seeing the 
various aspects of the graying and aged in America, this number is going to go 
up in the coming years as more and more of us become retirement age and we know 
that the older people get to be, the greater the number of disabilities that 
they are likely to have.  And certainly at age 80, we would estimate that 75 
percent of the people will have a disability.  So the very timely issue at this 
point in time. I think next is Beverly.

BEVERLY:  Yes, one of the things that we know is that there is very little 
reliable national data on crimes against people with disabilities in the United 
States.  The limited size and scope of the studies conducted to date preclude 
generalizing research results to the nation as a whole.  And this is really 
significant because if we are looking for services and funding for other 
services, we need to have a better idea of what types of crimes are being 
committed and at what rate.

Data has been collected to suggest that when compared to the general population, 
persons with disabilities are victimized at a much higher rate.  Patricia 
Sullivan recently did a study and found that children with any type of 
disabilities were almost three and a half times more likely to be victims of any 
type of child maltreatment than children without disabilities. 

(inaudible) has reported that people with developmental disabilities are four to 
ten times more likely to be victims of crime than people without disabilities. 

There was also a study in a five-year retrospective of over 4300 child patients 
with disabilities in a pediatric hospital, 68 percent were found to be victims 
of sexual abuse, and 32 percent were victims of physical abuse.  That holds true 
for women with disabilities, with physical disabilities.  There was a study of 
946 women, and of those women, 62 percent reported sexual victimization.

So although we don't have any good national statistics, we have lots of smaller 
studies and they all say the same thing, that people with disabilities are 
victims of crime at a much higher rate, not just sexual assault, which is one of 
the highest, but also robbery, burglary, destruction of property, personal 
crimes as well as crimes against the person -- property crimes, excuse me, as 
well as crimes against the person.

And now I'll pass this over -- I'm thinking who is next on the list -- to Ollie 
for legislation.

OLLIE:  Thank you, Bev.  There have been a number of pieces of legislation that 
have been put into place at the federal level to have a strong impact on the 
lives of people with disabilities.  The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. 
Department of Justice has been working in close collaboration with the Office 
for Victims of Crime and the Office on Violence Against Women.  And together 
within the justice department along with other components, we have actually 
worked to enhance attention to crime victimization of individuals with 
disabilities.

There are several pieces of legislation that have been put into place, one is 
the Americans with Disabilities Act, which among other things requires equality 
of access by people with all types of disabilities to state and local government 
programs and services, as well as places of public accommodation.

Within a crime victimization context, therefore, Title II of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act applies.  For further information about the Americans with 
Disabilities Act, individuals may visit the Civil Rights Division Disability 
Rights Section Americans with Disabilities Act web page at www.ada.gov.  There 
you will find information about yet another piece of legislation, Section 504 of 
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which requires that all entities receiving 
federal funds make their programs, services and activities accessible to people 
with disabilities.

In addition, the Fair Housing Act as amended in 1988 also applies, especially 
within the context of residential services for crime victims.  And this 
particularly is of importance to those who provide services such as housing and 
other related services. There is also the crime victims with disabilities 
awareness act, which was passed in 1998 which puts into place greater tracking 
of crimes against individuals with disabilities and requires the bureau of 
justice statistics within the U.S. Department of Justice to track crime 
victimization.

In all these areas, it is important for all those on the call to understand that 
serving people with disabilities is not an option but is rather something that 
is important for all of us to do as we work to strive for full inclusion.  And 
there are creative ways to do this in which we can discuss during the question 
and answer period in such a way that brings together partnerships between you 
and various other stakeholders in the field.  And we will discuss that further 
during this call.

And now I would like to turn over the time to Mary Lou Leary.

MARY LOU:  Thanks, Ollie.  And thanks for laying out the legislative landscape 
for us. We know there are so many unmet needs for crime victims with 
disabilities.  You've got to set some priorities for our collaborative effort.  
And the priority areas that we've set forth are five:  Public education, 
research, public policy, programs and services and national leadership. As a 
group, and with your help, all of you who are listening, we want to call on a 
wide range of partners to help in this endeavor, elected officials at the 
national, state and local levels, those who direct social service agencies, 
disability activists, law enforcement officers and prosecutors, victim service 
providers, leaders and social service, academic and business institutions, 
media, members of the general public as well.  We'll call on all of them to join 
us in a comprehensive effort to effect positive and meaningful change in those 
priority areas that we just laid out.

And today we want to talk a bit about each of these five areas and kind of put 
some meat on the bone.  Most importantly, we want to hear your ideas about each 
one of those priority areas. John, can you tell us something about the public 
education effort?

JOHN:  Yes, Mary Lou, in the public education arena, we want to raise awareness 
about the circumstances and needs of people with disabilities who become 
victims.  We want to address the unmet needs of this vulnerable population.  We 
must have a better understanding by the general public, by our elected 
officials, and other policymakers, the media and those in the disability 
criminal justice and victim services communities. 

We also have a need here to do extensive outreach to those who become victims, 
what their rights are and where they can go for help. And I'll turn it over now 
to Beverly to talk about research. 

BEVERLY:  Thanks, John.  Research is really a very important component.  It's to 
engage in a national research that will establish the prevalence and the 
consequences of crimes against people with disabilities and to identify best 
practices for crime prevention and victim services to members of the disability 
community. We really need a much clearer picture of the number of victims with 
disabilities, the rates and types of victimization among different disability 
groups, the behavior of the offender, and the setting in which victimization 
occurs, the availability and quality of services for crime victims with 
disabilities and the barriers to addressing these services, sound public policy, 
resource allocation and program development must be informed by current 
scientific valid data.

And that leads me on to public policy.  Public policy is again another important 
area.  It's to adopt public policies that really do  integrate crime victims 
with disabilities and their needs into the current framework of several state 
and local services.  We must fully engage the political and policy development 
process to ensure adequate resources are directed to addressing the needs of 
crime victims with disabilities.  Policies and laws that protect victims of 
crime must be inclusive of crime victims with disabilities.

Furthermore, laws and policies that address disability issues should acknowledge 
and be sensitive to crime victimization issues as appropriate.  And now I'd like 
to turn this back over to Mary Lou who will talk about program and services.

MARY LOU:  Thanks.  I think we can all agree that there is a strong need out 
there to improve the number of available services and certainly to improve 
access to appropriate services.  Our goal is to improve the number and the 
access to appropriate programs so that we can help all crime victims, including 
crime victims with disabilities rebuild their lives.

Together, we hope we launch a national effort to make sure that crime victims 
with disabilities have full access to victims' rights, protections and services 
that have so greatly expanded since the advent of the victims rights movement.  
And that's almost three decades ago now.

So what do we need to make this happen?  Training, training, training.  That's a 
key component.  Extensive training of victim service providers, law enforcement, 
prosecutors and judges is needed to make sure that victims with disabilities can 
fully participate in the criminal justice system.

And disability professionals also need thorough training so they can recognize 
and respond to signs of victimization in the populations that they work with.  
And that includes making appropriate referrals to victims service providers in 
their community.  We know there is a lot of good training going on out there, 
but we need to expand its reach.  We now there are some great programs out 
there, too, safe place in Austin, barrier free living in New York City, many, 
many, many others.

But we've got to find ways to share the information about these programs and 
replicate them throughout the country.  John, what about leadership for this 
effort?

JOHN:  Mary Lou, what we will hope to do here is we want to develop and foster 
the development of leaders who will act as change agents on behalf of people 
with disability.  Our partnership would hopefully bring about a national forum 
for proactive – a proactive voice for crime victims.

We want to provide a vehicle for exchange of ideas for this population and we 
want to provide a platform for a national dialogue on this topic and certainly 
hopefully the NCD and our role as adviser to the administration, to Congress can 
take some strong efforts in this area in particular and we get real excited 
about these leadership challenges facing us. I'd like to turn it back over to 
Mary Lou now. 

MARY LOU:  Thanks, John.  Ollie, are you going to take comments and questions?

OLLIE:  Yes, we'll open time for comments and questions at the conclusion.

MARY LOU:  Okay, well, that's now.

OLLIE:  Well, to briefly cap this off with the various five areas, before we 
actually go to comments and questions, I wanted to provide listeners with 
various resources so that way right immediately after you listen to this webcast 
you will begin to move forward and having further information in addition to 
what is already posted on ILRU's website. As already mentioned there is 
www.ada.gov.  And then following that, which also by the way that has 
information about 11 federal disability rights laws that are on the books, and 
for centralized federal information about disability related programs and 
services, you can go to www.disabilityinfo.gov.  And for looking at and reaching 
out to various independent living centers in your respective communities, can 
you go to the website of the sponsor here, the Independent Living Research 
Utilization at www.ilru.org which has a lit of the statewide independent living 
councils located in every state in this country and to reach out to individuals 
with psychiatric disabilities, you can go to www.nami.org, which is a National 
Alliance on Mental Illness and to also learn more about the different councils 
on developmental disabilities that are located throughout the country as you 
seek to serve these individuals, you can go to www.nacdd.org. That's the 
National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities.  And finally, at 
least for this portion of the call, you can also reach out to different legal 
advocates in the field which are part of the National Disability Rights Network.  

There are organizations called Protection & Advocacy Systems located in every 
state in this country that are federally funded and specifically geared toward 
upholding the rights of individuals with disabilities. You can go to 
www.ndrn.org.  And of course there is the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. 
Department of Justice which is at www.ada.gov which was discussed earlier, but 
also I need to point out that there are also links there to the Office for 
Victims of Crime and other resources when you go to the OBC page which also 
links to clearinghouses and other pages of information.  And with that I'd like 
to open now for questions.

OPERATOR:  At this time we will open the floor for questions.  If you would like 
to ask a question, please press the star key followed by the 1 key on your touch 
tone phone now.  Once again, if would you like to ask a question, please press 
star 1 on your telephone keypad now. Our first question comes from Michael 
March.

CALLER:  Good afternoon, this is Dorothy March from SUNY Upstate Medical 
University.  On behalf of our director of the Office on Disability, Office of 
the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I wish to inform 
you that she will soon be announcing a new initiative on violence and 
disability.  The Office on Disability in partnership with the Administration for 
Children and Families, in keeping with the president's New Freedom Initiative 
for people with disabilities, is supporting a pilot project to develop a 
national database on children and adults with disabilities who are victims of 
violence in conjunction with the federal agency responsible for collecting this 
data.  This will be the first national database on this population that is 
evidence-based.  It will at long last allow those of us who are stakeholders to 
determine the scope and magnitude of the problem based on valid and reliable 
data.

Plans for the full implementation of the project are being made and at the 
appropriate time a report will be forthcoming.  In addition, I would personally 
like to give special thanks to Sharon (inaudible) of the office of the Florida 
attorney general.  Thank you very much.

OLLIE:  Thank you.  And we appreciate the department of health and human 
services for its leadership in expanding effort in this arena, especially 
because research is so very critical.  Next question, please.

OPERATOR:  Thank you, our next question comes from Bill. Bill, are you on the 
line?

CALLER:  Yes, we just had to hit the mute button.  Sorry. Can you hear me now?

OPERATOR:  Yes, go ahead.

CALLER:  Hi, Ollie and John and everybody.  This is the McIntosh center.  While 
I agree this is an important issue to be looked at and the people with 
disabilities are not receiving the services they need when they are the victims 
of crime and are not considered as reliable witnesses by law enforcement, I 
think many of the crimes are not reported because law enforcement doesn't  
consider people with disabilities to be reliable witnesses or reliable sources 
and so I know this is an important issue, but my concern on top of this is that 
I don't think we should assume that people with disabilities have a higher 
incidents of being a victim of a crime because they happen to be easier targets 
perhaps or because criminals see them as people that are not going to be 
reliable witnesses, that prosecution is not going to happen, and so therefore 
they do this. I believe that in addition to some of those issues, there is some 
hate and prejudice that motivates these crimes and that people with disabilities 
are targeted because of their difference and we need to do a lot more in the 
area of prevention so that we don't have these excess numbers of people with 
disabilities being victims of crimes. In other words, I'd like to liken this to 
the issue where we're trying to get people out of institutions, where we should 
be trying to prevent them from being placed in institutions in the first place.  

We have a serious issue right now of people with disabilities who are victims of 
crimes and they certainly deserve equal treatment and equal services to 
everything they should have but we also need to focus on stopping that from 
happening.  And I think enforcement, strong enforcement of hate crime statutes, 
enhanced personalities will act as a deterrent to get people to stop doing it.

OLLIE:  Thank you, Bill.  And it's important for us to also clarify that in 
discussing the needs to serve crime victims with disabilities, that we as 
individuals with disabilities have an active role in our own safety which is 
really a great thing that you ended up pointing out.  Real briefly, for first 
responders who wish -- if you want to help first responders in interviewing 
potential crime victims with disabilities you can visit www.disability-
abuse.com.  There is a video that was paid for and produced under the 
sponsorship of the Office for Victims of Crime that assists first responders.  
And with that I'd like to also direct this question to Beverly Frantz who is a 
researcher in this arena and who could also provide some additional thoughts 
regarding Bill's comments.

BEVERLY:  I just happen to have in front of me the -- from 2005 the F.B.I.'s 
hate crime statistics and in 2005 there were 54 victims who were identified 
based on their disability as a hate crime, and part of the reason that we really 
need to focus on research is -- my guess is that there are more than 54 people 
in the country in 2005 who were victims of hate crimes with disabilities; but if 
we don't know what to look for, if we don't give the training to even victim 
service people to when they see a victim to kind of maybe get a little more 
information and definitely law enforcement, we won't be able to really show the 
policymakers that this is an issue and it's an issue that needs to be addressed 
in a much more concerted effort than we've done in the past.  So I agree that 
there is definitely an issue around bias towards people with disabilities, but I 
also think very much that there is the issue of somebody with a disability is 
perceived and I want to emphasize perceived to be more vulnerable.  And that 
they aren't often believed in court, depending upon the disability, and so those 
issues also come into play. 

OLLIE:  Thank you very much, Bev.  I'd also like to turn over some time briefly 
to Mary Lou Leary because she in her leadership of the National Center for 
Victims of Crime can also discuss with those who are listening to this webcast 
the nature of victim/witness programs for those particularly who are listening 
who may not be familiar with the victim/witness system.  Mary Lou...

MARY LOU:  I assume you're talking within prosecutor's offices when we talk 
about prosecuting hate crimes involving crime victims with disabilities.  I have 
some experience in my prior life as a prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney 
here in Washington D. C.  And I was very interested in the comments that were 
just made because I know from personal experience that prosecuting hate crimes 
involving any victim is an extremely difficult.  There is a real challenge when 
it comes to raising awareness in the general public about hate crimes and what 
are they and how is it that you report them and to whom?  

And a huge issue -- a big challenge with training law enforcement because when 
someone is victimized, it's -- relatively easy to see that they've been 
assaulted, for instance, that they have been stabbed, they've been shot, they've 
been sexually abused, whatever, but it is not often so obvious that the 
motivation was a hate crime or a bias crime kind of motivation.  And I think 
it's not so obvious in part because law enforcement doesn't necessarily look for 
that.  It's a tough thing to prove, and in my experience, and Beverly is right, 
we need more research on this, folks with disabilities really may be perceived 
as being targets, more vulnerable, easier to prey upon, and they don't 
necessarily have the resources to get the help they need to report hate crimes 
and to really help the general public combat them. 

We need services and we feed programs to address that.  I can tell you about 
some of the programs that are out there now which really have been pretty 
effective at supporting crime victims with disabilities. 

Some of those programs address training on disabilities and we recommend that 
training on disabilities come from victim service providers as an integral part 
of any staff training program.  There are a few websites you could go to:  
www.austin-safeplace.org.  They have disability awareness training for victim 
service professionals. www.speaking.org, that's speaking for ourselves and 
that's a program in Pennsylvania that is run by and for people with 
disabilities.  Again, awareness training. 

And then the Blue Tower Training Center which is a division of Macon Resources 
provides training and resources to individuals with disabilities, to their 
families and to service providers, and that is at www.maconresources.org/blue 
tower. Another thing we highly recommend is that folks recruit and train 
individuals with disabilities to become victim assistance volunteers or to 
become paid staff members.  And there is a Job Accommodation Network available 
at janweb dot -- (inaudible).

You can get connected with a specialist there who knows employment issues, 
public access issues and can help you figure out how to modify facilities to 
provide access for folks that do have disabilities.  Those are some of the 
resources that are available. 

OLLIE:  Thank you, Mary Lou.  Next question, please. 

OPERATOR:  Thank you, our next question comes from Mike. 

CALLER:  Hello.

OPERATOR:  Mike, go ahead.

CALLER:  I didn't know if it was going to be read or if I'm on the phone here.  
I think these are all really great ideas.  I am a person with a disability and 
certainly know a number of folks that have been affected by crime in one way or 
another.  I guess my question has to do with more the mechanics.  It sounds like 
there has been a lot of good dialogue between some very topnotch national 
organizations here.  I work for a (inaudible) and so I'm very familiar with AUCD 
and certainly ILRU and I'm glad to see this dialogue is happening.  I guess I'm 
wondering what your visions are for what you see happening back in the states.  
Are you looking to have – to create some type of infrastructure where we're 
going to be able to work together on some of these things?  Are you just saying, 
okay, you guys go out there and do good things in your states now or we've got 
some wonderful philosophy here and I'm wondering about the next concrete steps 
for what we're going to -- how we're going to move from here?

OLLIE:  Chairman Vaughn?

JOHN:  I think we certainly are at the beginning of this journey, not that this 
journey hasn't been going on.  This is a new effort that a number of us have 
come together with and we're bringing it to you, the community, many in the 
disability community and our next steps I think are going to be trying to 
identify those best practices out there.  I think public awareness is going to 
be one of the big things that we can do.  

I mean, I just think of how many families don't even think about the fact that 
their aging parents now become victims of crime and the implications of that. I 
think what we're going to be looking at at the NCD now is looking at where there 
are some holes in research and maybe we can steer some of our nickels and dimes 
over into that type of research; but I think a lot of this public awareness, 
trying to develop a network of getting good information out there to help with 
the training and the awareness and so forth.  I think we're at the beginning of 
the trip and I think we're not quite sure where it's all going to go from here.  
And as you have ideas, don't hesitate to send me an E-mail at 
chairperson@ncd.gov because we want to hear from you and where you think we need 
to be going with this whole process.

OLLIE:  Thank you, Mary Lou?

MARY LOU:  Yeah, thanks.  It's a great question.  So where do we go from here?  
We're hoping to create some synergy so that -- among all the different interest 
groups so we can work together. This is a very -- this is the beginning of our 
dialogue today, but we will be posting and making available a bulletin board, 
and you can access it on the same page where you accessed this webcast where you 
signed in.  It will be up I think by the end of the day tomorrow, and we hope 
that that will be a place for each of us to post your reaction to the ideas, to 
post your questions that weren't answered today, and maybe most importantly, 
post the ideas about how to move this agenda forward on the five priority areas.

OLLIE:  Thank you.  And on behalf of AUCD?

BEVERLY:  I think there are many of us who have worked in this field for a long 
time, but this is the first time it's really being pulled together by three 
really important national organizations and we need that.  We need that in order 
to get more visibility, to help direct policy, and to find funding to do 
research that will support programs so people with disabilities can receive the 
services that other crime victims receive.

OLLIE:  Thank you very much.  In the past, what those of you who are 
participating in this webcast may have either found or felt is that some efforts 
may have been in isolation, but because of all these centralized efforts, there 
will be one place for people to go so that there would be a prevention of 
reinventing the proverbial wheel and new synergies can also result. Next 
question, please.

OPERATOR:  Our next question comes from Mark.

CALLER:  I just wanted to first say how gratifying it is to see the 
collaboration taking place.  It's wonderful and I want to share with you a 
resource else on the web called Communities Against Violence Network at 
www.cavnet.org.  They have brought together organizations and individuals to 
share information and resources both through a list serve and a website and I 
want to offer my assistance. I work at the Center for Independent Living in 
Broward and the Center for Independent Living in Miami/Dade as director of 
advocacy.  

And I wanted to just commend the organizations that have brought this together 
because this has been a long time coming and I know now with the national 
leadership that has been brought together that we will make far more successful 
efforts on behalf of people with disabilities so thank you all for the work 
you're doing.

OLLIE:  Thank you, Mark, and your leadership is appreciated, especially over the 
time that you were also here with me at the justice department and I miss ya.  
So next question, please.

OPERATOR:  Our next question comes from Denise.

CALLER:  Hi, thank you all for this presentation.  I truly appreciate it.  My 
name is Denise for those of you who knew me in my former life over at the ark of 
New Jersey.  I'm now at the office of the child advocate and my question really 
relates to best practices out there for identifying and serving children with 
disabilities who are victims of abuse, neglect or exploitation.  Just in my 
brief experience here, I do know that what I see just coming through the 
pipeline is that children with disabilities are often not identified within our 
child abuse and neglect statistics, although the records clearly show that they 
either have cognitive disability or behavioral issues and it's not noted as such 
in their record so it wouldn't be cap toured with the data collection here.  Are 
there any advice in collecting that data and implementing programs to serve this 
population.

BEVERLY:  One of the anything that I think we were all hoping to get out of this 
webcast is that we believe that there are -- I shouldn't say we believe -- we 
know that there are lots of small programs, either at a local or state level 
that are doing great things.  We just don't know of them unless we happen to 
know somebody who is working on that project.  So we're hoping that people will 
let us know, send us their best practices, things that they are doing so that we 
can share that information with others. 

So we really want to encourage people to let us know what's going  on in their 
local areas as well as their state.  And we're looking at ways to try to figure 
out how capture that information; but I don't have any -- I mean, I don't have 
any program that I can tell you off the top of my head has been doing anything.  
This is an area that seems to be most people are really struggling with. 

CALLER:  Thank you.

OLLIE:  Thank you.  Is there -- Sharon, are there any questions by E-mail?

SHARON:  Yes, there are.  This question is what can be done on the Indian 
reservations that profession tribal sovereign rule?

BEVERLY:  This is Bev.  The New Mexico coalition of sexual assault had received 
an ADA -- a grant a couple of years ago to work on issues of sexual assault and 
people with disabilities living on Indian reservations, and they did some really 
good work.  It was very hard, but they did some really good stuff. Afterwards, 
if there is a name with that E-mail, I can give you a contact person there that 
you can call and find out what they were doing on the reservations.

CALLER:  Thank you.

OLLIE:  and for those who may not know, ADD stands for the administration on 
developmental disabilities which is under the U.S. department of health and 
human services.

BEVERLY:  Thank you, Wally.

SHARON:  Thanks for clarifying that.  The question is over the past 20 years we 
have worked with thousands of victims with disabilities, telling the stories 
traumatic to both teller and the person listening.  Resources need to be 
available to address the trauma before asking the questions, not afterwards.  
What plans would be put into place to assure that any person with a disability 
that reported a traumatic event would have counseling available to them? 

OLLIE:  I think that Mary Lou Leary who actually has a broader experience 
working with different populations can actually shed some light on this.

MARY LOU:  That's a serious issue for all crime victims and for victims with 
disabilities in particular because of some of the access issues.  We do have a 
toll free helpline that would provide support and make service referrals for all 
victims of all types of crimes.  That's 1-800-FYI-CALL, but I will say one of 
the goals of this partnership is to get more information -- to gather 
information and disseminate better information in the field about services for 
victims of crime with disabilities and then to really be a catalyst for 
developing more programs, better programs and in particular for pushing the 
envelope for victims to have disabilities.

BEVERLY:  and this is Bev, one of the things that we have done is we've formed a 
really good collaboration with the Pennsylvania coalition against rape and one 
of the things that we say with their permission is that any time we talk to a 
person with a disability who might need a rape crisis counsel or, that if they 
call a program and they don't receive the type of treatment that they believe 
they deserve for whatever reason, they call us and actually I place a call to 
the Executive Director of PCAR and together we work with that program in a very 
positive way to ensure that they know how to approach a person with a 
disability.  We provide training, technical assistance, whatever is needed, but 
we have built that relationship over years, so we can't guarantee that everyone 
with a disability will be met in the most favorable light, but working together 
as agencies, we've been able to do that and we just say, you know, just call and 
we'll call PCAR and together we provide that program with what they need to be 
sure to -- that that victim gets the best that they can get.

OLLIE:  Thank you.  Any other questions by E-mail?

SHARON:  Yes.  A number of us have significant experience working with victims 
with disabilities.  What will be done to involve individuals and/or 
organizations that have developed significant expertise in this field?

OLLIE:  Chairman Vaughn?

JOHN:  Well, you know one thing just sort of sitting here thinking and 
listening, you know, maybe there will be some kind of summit or something of 
that nature that NCD can look at trying to bring together a lot of folks.  As I 
say, we're at the beginning of this journey, and any thoughts or comments any of 
you have, please, the chairperson at NCD.gov would be glad to hear those.  I 
wish I could say more, except we're open to whatever things might help the 
effort.

OLLIE:  and to add to what was just said, Dorothy March who was on the call 
earlier just sort of giving folks an update on the work of health and human 
services, I don't know if she's still on the call, but if she can chime in with 
her information.  She put together a book that has good comprehensive 
recommendations that are substantive to actually directly answer this question 
as well. 

BEVERLY:  and this is Bev.  Earlier I mentioned it would be helpful if people 
had a promising practice to send it to us, so if the person who sent the E-mail, 
if you have trainers, if you have expertise in this area, we really want to hear 
about it because this is -- this is a national agenda item, but it's also for 
state and local, so I know at the institute we get calls saying do you know of 
an expert in this area or that area?  So it would be great to have those 
resources that we could share with other people.

OLLIE:  a good way to share those resources, BEV, would be to post them on the 
bulletin board.  Everybody who is participating today can share the ideas.  That 
bulletin board as I said will be up again at the end of the day tomorrow and you 
can find it on the same page where you access the webcast.  It's listed as the 
last bullet under presentation handouts.  It's listed as a discussion bulletin. 
We hope that everybody will take advantage of that, and if you indicated in your 
registration that you want to continue to hear from us on this, that's great, 
and we'll be creating list serves to keep this dialogue going.

JOHN:  Ollie, this is John if I could chime in here for one second.  The NCD, we 
travel around the country holding public hearings and comment -- receive public 
comment and we know there is a lot of things going on out there, and we all do.  
That's the frustrating thing because there is 300 million people and thousands 
of cities and communities.

We were out in San Diego for our quarterly meeting out there back in January and 
we had show up at our meeting somebody from the police department out there, and 
they had developed a wonderful manual on crime victims with disability.  And I 
guess my point is, is we know there is a lot of these things out there, 
resources and I guess what we are going to be really hopeful is, one, by public 
awareness, bringing this to the forefront, these practices start coming out and 
maybe also the problems come out, the solutions hopefully can follow.

and the national sexual assault resource library and the national domestic 
resource libraries have information on disabilities related to either domestic 
violence or sexual assault so that's also another resource.

OLLIE:  Thank you.  In the interest of time, just for those who may have 
allocated only an hour, I wanted to provide everyone an opportunity who is on 
this call to have our E-mail addresses and if folks wanted to give those out and 
then we'll continue this time for questions for a bit longer depending on how 
many questions are in the queue, but also wanted to make sure to provide that in 
case folks had to leave the webcast.  Just to start briefly, this is Ollie 
Cantos, special counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 
the Justice Department.  I'm at ollie.cantos@usdoj.gov.

JOHN:  I'm John Vaughn, our website is ncd.gov.  And my E-mail, I've given it to 
you is chairperson@ncd.gov. Our number in Washington is (202)272-2004.  And I'll 
pull it here in just a second our TTY number because we have that, too, but 
Ollie, why don't you move on to somebody else until I get that information.

OLLIE:  And Mary Lou Leary.

MARY LOU:  Yeah, you can reach us through gethelp@ncvc.org and our website is 
ncvc -- Nancy Charles Victor Charles -- .org, the toll free helpline is 1-800-
FYI-CALL and the TTY -- 1-800-211-7996.  And I want to mention that when you go 
on our website you will see a piece about our national conference coming up in 
Washington on June 18th to the 20th.  And we have a whole track of that 
conference that is devoted to issues pertaining to crime victims with 
disabilities.  So do check that out.

OLLIE:  Thank you.  And Beverly.

BEVERLY:  My E-mail address is bfrantz@temple.edu and our website is 
disabilities.temple.edu and our TTY and office phone number is (215)204-1356.

OLLIE:  And John Vaughn, do you have the TTY?

JOHN:  Yes, I do, and that would be (202)272-2074.  And my personal address also 
would be jvaughn@ncd.gov as well.

OLLIE:  Thank you.  Do we have time for another few questions?

SHARON:  I think we have a couple of minutes left in the presentation today.  So 
Chantel are there any more questions from the telephone lines?

OPERATOR:  Let me give a quick reminder.  If you would like to ask a question, 
it is star 1 on your telephone keypad now. Once again, that is star 1 on your 
touch tone phone to ask a question. Speakers at this time we have no questions 
in the queue.

OLLIE:  And by E-mail?

SHARON:  I think that is all the questions for today.

OLLIE:  Great.  This is wonderful.  We are really, all of us here who have been 
participating in this call are very, very grateful to the hundreds of you who 
are listening live as well as over time to the thousands of you who are 
listening by archived version to this webcast.  This webcast is part of an 
organized and concerted effort to create a turnkey operation to educate the 
world about the needs of crime victims with disabilities as well as how it is 
that people from whatever stakeholder position they have may do their part to 
serve the community, that includes those in the law enforcement community as 
well as the disability community and victim/witness communities.  And when we 
think about how it is that we can move ahead together, this webcast must be but 
yet the next step.  We have outlined here collectively what we're going to do 
over the next while because of supporting one another, but the success of this 
effort and implementation of the five point plan must be and is dependent on the 
degree to which each and every one of you who listens to this webcast 
participates in contributing to the solution, and by doing your part to bring 
others on board.  So for those of you who are disability organizations, reach 
out to your victim/witness programs in your local areas and engage those in 
government, the nonprofit sector as well as other individuals who might want to 
be involved.  

By like manner, those who are in the victim/witness field have an incredible 
opportunity to reach out and dialogue to organizations serving people with all 
types of disabilities in order that dialogue and partnerships may be strengthen 
as the local level and then as best practices are developed and distributed 
through centralized efforts at the national level, then we collectively will be 
in a better position than ever to make a real and lasting difference in the 
lives of people with all types of disabilities across the lifespan and with that 
I'd like to turn that -- the time over to who needs to have it next.

SHARON:  Thank you all.  This is Sharon Finney again with ILRU.  We have run out 
of our time today.  Thank you for joining us. This presentation will be archived 
at www.ilru.org. You'll find the audio of this webcast and the text transcript 
also the link to the bulletin board for discussion where you're welcome to post 
additional questions. 

The IL NET and ILRU have been pleased to host the webcast today. This training 
was funded in large part by the rehabilitation services administration through 
the IL NET, the training and technical assistance program operated for centers 
for independent living and statewide independent living councils under Award No. 
H-132A020004. The contents of the information in this webcast does not 
necessarily reflect the policy or position of the U.S. government and no 
official endorsement should be inferred.

Also I want to thank the webcast team at ILRU who made this and all other 
webcasts possible, they include Marj Gordon, Dawn Heinsohn, Marissa Demaya, and 
Maria del Bosque as well as the technical expertise of Rob Dickehuth and our 
realtime captioner Marie Bryant.

For a list of upcoming webcasts, please visit us at www.ilru.org. Thank you all 
for joining us today and have a great afternoon.