We Need To Talk About The Domestic Abuse Of Autistic Adults
It didn’t take long for me to identify a sweeping problem that no one is talking about.
After much confusion, anguish, flashbacks, self-blame, and subsequent therapy regarding a traumatic period in my own life, it finally occurred to me that autistic adults like myself might be at heightened risk for domestic abuse within romantic relationships.
After all, there has been abundant research indicating a strikingly high prevalence among autistic people when it comes to being mistreated even by those we believe to be friends; we’re also much more liable, for example, to be bullied in school and abused as children.
Such betrayals may be associated with the typically good and trusting nature of autistic people — but they are primarily caused by the complex ableist structures and attitudes writ large in society. There is no obvious reason to think these forces wouldn’t make autistic adults more at risk for domestic abuse, as well.
Strikingly, though, when I began researching the matter, I could find almost nothing addressing the topic. In the scientific literature, a clear correlation had been found between being autistic and an increased risk for experiencing sexual violence during adulthood; a recent small-scale…
