Tenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Sexual abuse victimization certainly has negative influences on victims’ health and wellness, including physiological and psychological aspects. The perpetrators of sexual abuse usually target persons who are weak and less likely to report the incident. As a result, people with disabilities are at higher risk of being sexually victimized than those without disabilities (Hershkowitz, Lamb, and Horowitz, 2007; Nosek, Foley, Hughes, and Howland, 2001). However, the perpetrators of sexual abuse who have been acquitted have the opportunity to abuse more people on one hand, and the justice for the victims cannot be reached on the other hand. In a report of the Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice (2017), the ratio of appeals and convictions of sexual abuse victimization for people with intellectual disabilities are lower than that of people without intellectual disabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the reasons for acquittal of sexual abuse victimization for people with intellectual disability. As for the research method, this study uses the thematic analysis method of qualitative research. The verdict records of sexual abuse victimization for people with intellectual disabilities will be collected through the verdict records inquiry system of the Judicial Department website of Taiwan. The verdict records were repeatedly read and meaningful units in the text were coded and summarized. Then all the summaries were categorized and transformed into concepts. In this way the data was thematically conceptualized to arrive at the acquittal reasons of sexual abuse victimization for people with intellectual disability.