Read: How deaf women are vulnerable to domestic abuse: the tragic story of Safiya

An article in the New Statesman has followed up on the harrowing story of a Deaf woman who was kept as a slave and repeatedly raped with this article on how Deaf women are vulnerable to domestic abuse.

The writer, Frances Ryan, points out that deaf women are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse, and because of their deafness, find it much harder to escape it.

Ryan writes:

Deaf women are twice as likely as hearing women to experience domestic abuse, according to DeafHope, the only support service for women and children facing domestic violence. When we know one in four women in this country are victims of abuse in the home, this figure seems particularly stark. It’s estimated that 22 deaf women are at risk of domestic violence every day.

She also interviews Steve Powell, from Sign Health:

“Deaf women are largely unaware of where they can go for support and sometimes that what they are experiencing is actually abuse,” Steve Powell, Chief Executive of Sign Health, the national charity for deaf people which runs DeafHope, tells me. “Of course due to language barriers they are often unable to report violence,” he adds.

Read the full article here: http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2013/10/how-deaf-women-are-vulnerable-domestic-abuse-tragic-story-safiya