Sexual violence against women with disabilities: intersection between race/color and vulnerability

Sexual violence is characterized as any unwanted sexual act to obtain one's own pleasure or actions to commercialize or otherwise use a person's sexuality through coercion, regardless of the person's relationship to the victim.

To correlate the sociodemographic characteristics of disabled women victims of sexual violence with race/color.

This is a cross- sectional study. The data was collected between June and July 2024 in São Paulo, using information from the Notifications of Confirmed Cases of Sexual Violence against Women with Disabilities in the Notifiable Diseases Information System (SINAN), on the TabNet platform of the São Paulo Municipal Health Department. R software, version 4.0.2 and the Chi-squared test were used.

A total of 3,288 notifications were recorded. The main sociodemographic characteristics of women with disabilities, according to race/color, reveal that black women were the most victimized compared to other women. The majority were young, single, heterosexual, with little or no schooling and living in the poorest areas of the city. The most frequent disability was intellectual or significant mental disorder. The most reported type of violence was rape, motivated by sexism. In addition, black women received fewer referrals to human rights bodies and, in general, were treated mainly for STI and HIV prophylaxis.

The study shows that black women with disabilities are more vulnerable to sexual violence. It is suggested that health professionals who treat victims of this type of violence receive continuous training, with an emphasis on improving the recording of notifications to avoid blank or ignored data and on offering specialized care, taking into account the particularities of each woman, as in the case of people with intellectual disabilities. It should be noted that the research has limitations as it uses secondary data.