Mexican government accused of torture by ex-patients of disabled care home
For decades, disabled children and adults living in institutions worldwide have suffered abuse of all kinds – from deprivation and solitary confinement in miniature cells, to sexual abuse and forced sterilisation.
Now a charity which has documented this abuse for more than 20 years is bringing a landmark legal case against the Mexican government, with the intention of laying down a new line in international law.
Throughout their years of research, Disability Rights International (DRI) has found sickening abuse in donor, state-funded and private institutions for people with disabilities across the world. A three-year investigation in Ukraine revealed that children detained in institutions without “adequate government oversight” were at risk of being trafficked for sex, pornography, or organs. At a psychiatric asylum in Argentina in the early 2000s, DRI (then known as Mental Disability Rights International) documented patients locked naked in tiny isolation cells. When people with psychosocial disabilities are subjected to social and sensory isolation like this, it is classed as degrading treatment or torture, according to the UN special rapporteur on torture.
They’re not protecting the women from getting raped by sterilising them, they’re protecting them from getting pregnant
The institutions that house children and adults in Mexico have been one of DRI’s principal focuses since 2000. Their first groundbreaking report documenting abuse in the Samuel Ramirez hospital in Mexico City contributed to the landmark 2006 UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.
In 2014, a two-year investigation into the state of facilities for people with disabilities in Mexico City found residents were sexually abused, locked in cages, left permanently in cribs, and overall detained in “dehumanising conditions”, as the charity described it. “People with disabilities have the right to stay in society and not be locked up,” said Eric Rosenthal, executive director of DRI. In Mexico he witnessed “effectively no community services; a total system of segregation”.
The case that DRI is now bringing centres on children and adults detained at Casa Esperanza institution in Mexico City. Casa Esperanza featured on a list compiled by Mexico City authorities of facilities for people with disabilities that were particularly abusive that was passed to DRI in May 2014 by an anonymous source.
In repeated visits to Casa Esperanza in 2014 and 2015 carried out by representatives from DRI, who were open about their intentions to investigate the facility, 37 people were found to be held in “dangerous, violent, degrading and unhygienic conditions”.
In one interview with the director of the institution in 2014, which is recorded on video, he states that the forced sterilisation of some of the women in the home is standard policy as a precautionary measure against pregnancy, in reference to the risk of sexual abuse (a resident told DRI that a repairman had raped her). “They’re not protecting them from getting raped, they’re protecting them from getting pregnant,” said Rosenthal.
Interviews conducted by DRI with patients at Casa Esperanza who were able to communicate disclosed harrowing tales of assault. Five women revealed they were being sexually abused by a relative of a senior staff member, and a workman.
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