One of the most critical things we need to understand is that women with disabilities are not even disclosing.
I think really, Niki, that your question is important, but one of the things that DAWN Canada is doing for the 16 days to end violence against women is a campaign called “We can tell and we will tell”. That's because many women with disabilities do not disclose or do not understand that what's happening to them is abuse, because they have been abused so much in so many different ways that it simply feels as though that's the way it's supposed to be.
Having said that, I totally agree with you and I would certainly say, based on the work that DAWN has been doing and as part of the national action committee on access to family justice, I can confirm that in terms of what we know is going on in the family court systems that something like, I believe, 80% of people in the family court system are self-represented litigants. Among those, perhaps 1% or 2% are people with disabilities. We are not represented in the court system. We are not supported.
One of the important pieces of work DAWN Canada did—and it's available on our website—was our recommendations on the victims of crime bill. We worked with Sue O'Sullivan very closely on all of that work with respect to recommendations for how to support people with disabilities in the justice system. It becomes extremely important in this conversation around violence against women with disabilities to understand that this is an absolutely critical issue. It is an enormous gap. Women with disabilities are not making it to the court systems, and when they do they experience all kinds of different discrimination. The D.A.I.decision that Carmela refers to is very specific to a woman with an intellectual disability who had been questioned on her ability to know the difference between the truth and a lie.