Mentally disabled people prey to 'hidden sexual violence'

Sexual assaults on mentally disabled people in Hong Kong were an increasingly common occurrence, social workers said, reflecting both the vulnerability of the victims and the hidden nature of sexual violence.

The CEASE Crisis Centre, which works with victims of sexual violence, said it recorded 17 cases involved mentally disabled victims in the first nine months of this year, against 12 for the whole of last year. Some 76 such cases - about 10 per cent of the centre's total caseload - had been reported since it opened in 2007. All of the male victims it had worked with had mental disabilities.

Yet even those statistics did not reflect the scale of the problem, said Pandora Liu Pui-shan, the centre's assistant supervisor. Discussions with other NGOs revealed that sexual violence was "quite a common occurrence".

"Social workers from different NGOs serving the intellectually disabled community tell us there are quite a lot of [sexual violence cases] and they are common," Liu said. "Intellectually disabled people are very vulnerable - they tend to be very trusting and think simply, making them easy prey.

"Normally no one reports these cases but it doesn't mean they don't happen.

"We are reaching a very small proportion of the victims."