Carers as primary and secondary victims of disablism: what role for hate

This thesis will investigate whether targeted abuse and violence experienced by carers, of
disabled people in the United Kingdom (UK) should be protected under hate crime
legislation. In the context of this thesis, carers will mean family members. Paid carers will
not be included in this analysis and investigation. Despite increased academic attention on
disability hate crime during recent years (Macdonald, Donovan and Clayton, 2017), there
remains a gap in the academic literature pertaining to the indirect and direct victimisation of
carers of disabled people. Carers of disabled people play a vital role in the lives of disabled
people and are frequently targeted because of their associations with disabled people.
Data published by the Home Office shows that there are an estimated 52,000 disability hate
crimes committed each year (Home Office, 2020). Hate crimes necessitate serious attention
because they are significantly more harmful to victims and the community to which the
victims belong than other comparable crimes (Iganski and Lagou, 2014). Hate crime laws
recognise the distinct harms caused by such prejudice and aim to protect against offences
aggravated by disablist hostility under the Sentencing Code, section 66. But, carers of
disabled people are not protected by this legislation. Moreover, empirical research on
disability hate crime highlights that carers can often be perpetrators of hostility towards
disabled people (Walters and Kradomoski, 2018; Mason-Bish, 2012). This focus on exposing
the role of some carers as perpetrators has had the unintentional consequence of invisibling
carers of disabled people as victims.