by Mark DrinkwaterI recently attended a depressing court case where a disabled man received a jail sentence after being convicted of sexual assaults on other disabled men. The offender was a man I knew well. Or at least I thought I did.
The case is an unsettling one. Richard* was a committed disability activist. He was an inveterate participant in disability-related meetings and I would see him as the service user representative on various boards and he also sat on the management committees of numerous local charities.
He got involved in things that few have the time or inclination to attend and appeared to be the model service user; someone able to articulate his own needs as well as being able to advocate on behalf of other disabled people.
Prior to sentencing, I heard character evidence where witnesses gave testimony that supported this positive view of him. Evidently, others thought, as I had, that he did much to promote the betterment of disabled people's circumstances.
However, in court I also heard other accounts about his sexual assaults on disabled men. His victims, who were less physically able than him, gave disturbing accounts of the attacks and their victim impact statements told of the long-lasting damage arising from these offences.
It's difficult to find a positive angle in this story other than the sense that with victims with such profound communication difficulties the case might never have come to court in bygone decades. Certainly, today there are better measures in place to protect vulnerable adults from abuse as a result of advancements in multi-agency policy and procedures, most notably from the No Secrets guidance.
But this particular case has left me struggling to comprehend how the man I thought I knew could commit such monstrous crimes. It's a cautionary tale about trust and who you think you know. How well can you ever know someone? Sometimes, not well enough it seems.
Mark Drinkwater is a London based community worker
*Not his real name
