Developing Vulnerability: A Situational Response to the Abuse of Women with Mental Disabilities

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Jaime Lindsey
• 关键词：Vulnerability ; Autonomy ; Capacity ; Mental disability ; Safeguarding ; Sexual violence
• 刊名：Feminist Legal Studies
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：November 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：24
• 期：3
• 页码：295-314
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Public International Law; Gender Studies; Human Rights; Political Theory;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1572-8455
• 卷排序：24

文摘

In this paper I present a critical analysis of the English law relating to the safeguarding of vulnerable adults, in particular how the law impacts on the sexual lives of adult women with mental disabilities. I consider the discourses of vulnerability that surround the different legal regimes and whether the emerging theoretical vulnerability literature can assist in developing more nuanced legal responses. I argue that the inherent jurisdiction and Care Act 2014 provide an opportunity to move away from the focus on inherent features of vulnerability such as mental disability towards a more nuanced, situational and embodied account of what it means to safeguard ‘vulnerable adults’. This has the potential to be developed in England through the new legal framework of the Care Act and can be achieved through targeting interventions against the situational causes of vulnerability, for example the perpetrators of sexual violence.