FRIDA links

for the week 5/2/2008 to 5/9/2008

Lots of newspapers reported on Haleigh Poutre, a 14-year-old Massachesetts girl who is now communicating to investigators, using simple words and hand gestures, that her adoptive mother and stepfather, Holli and Jason Strickland, regularly physically abused her. But she has been unable to say anything about what put her into a coma. Poutre, who was initially diagnosed as being in an "irreversible vegetative state" after sustaining severe injuries to her brain from alleged parental abuse, has been in a children's rehab hospital in Boston for the last two years. Jason Strickland is awaiting trial on child abuse charges. Holli Strickland was killed by her grandmother, who then took her own life, shortly after she was charged. More here ....

An East Fishkill man (White Plains, Westchester County, New York) who worked as an overnight aide at a group home will serve six months in jail for sexually abusing a woman with intellectual disabilities who lived in the home, according to this report in the Poughkeepsie Journal.

An Irish woman who became disabled in an accident has been awarded compensation after her employers refused to let her return to work, according to this story from the BBC.

According to the Houston Chronicle, states record show that about a quarter of the 800 employees fired or suspended for mistreating residents at Texas's state schools for people with intellectual disabilities worked at two state schools targeted by federal investigators: these are the Lubbock and Denton state schools. State records also show that nearly 58 per cent of the firings or suspensions came from four of the 13 state schools: Lubbock, Denton, San Angelo and Mexia.

Several men accused of raping and assaulting a women with learning difficulties will not be prosecuted because she is considered to be an "unreliable witness," according to this report in the UK's guardian.

A Marblehead man has been charged with raping a woman with Down syndrome, The Salem News reports.

"Attitudes towards children with disabilities need improvement, parents say," is the title of this story from CBC news, Canada.

"Scandal of elderly people tortured in homes" is the title of this report in the UK's Mirror.

"5,000 complaints a month over care home abuse fears" is the title of this story in the UK's Daily Mail.

A Glen Ellyn man has been sentenced to 36 years in prison for sexually abusing a intellectually impaired girl on six occasions before his arrest in September, the Chicago Tribune reports.