FRIDA links

for the week 5/9/2008 to 5/16/2008

According to police in Austin, Texas, a man arrested for paying a 15-year-old deaf student at the Texas School for the Deaf to expose himself is a serial predator. The man was a dorm supervisor at the school. He was also a church youth group leader and may have abused adults with intellectual impairments.

A 20-year-old man saved an elderly woman in a wheelchair from being struck by an on-coming train after her wheelchair became stuck on rail-road tracks in Lodi, California, KTLA-TV reports.

This disturbing article in the Pioneer Local draws attention to the growing problem of the abuse of the elderly in Illinois. According to the most recent state data, the number of elder abuse cases in Illinois has risen by 5.4 percent, from 8,999 in 2006 to 9,489 in 2007. The most common form of elder abuse is financial exploitation, according to the article, followed by emotional abuse, neglect and physical abuse. Sexual abuse is rarely reported, but it does happen.

Neil Sauter, a Michigan man with cerebral palsy, has begun a 830-mile walk across Michigan on wooden stilts to help raise money for United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The Oregonian has this rememberance of Amelia Lewis de Gremli, who died on Friday at the age of 88. Amongst many other things, Ms de Gremli is remembered for drawing attention to the plight of elder abuse in Oregon.

A British woman with disability has been given permission by a High Court judge to bring a test challenge over the closure of local post offices, the Times (UK) reports. If successful, the challenge could stop the closing of thousands of post offices and put further closures under scrutiny.

The British government has issued new guidelines aimed at stamping out the bullying of students with disabilities and special needs, the Education Guardian (UK) reports.

For the first time, a UK recruitment agency has been found guilty of disability discrimination, according to this report in the Guardian (UK).