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This paper reports on a prevalence study of sexual abuse of 65 women and 120 men with intellectual disabilities who were referred for sex education. The prevalence rate of abuse was found to be significantly higher for women (61%) than men (25%). Almost all perpetrators were men, with the majority being men with intellectual disabilities or fathers. Women are shown to experience the sexual contact more negatively than the men, although it was usual for both the women and men to feel quite ambivalent about the perpetrator and what he had done to them. Typically the abuse was revealed by the victims themselves, but they were unaware of its social meaning. Generally responses to the abuse were very weak, however there is evidence that the abuse of men is taken more seriously. The poorest service responses were recorded for women who had been abused by men with intellectual disabilities.

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Of a total of 120 men with intellectual disabilities who were referred for sex education, 75 had allegedly perpetrated some form of sexual abuse. Presented here is a statistical analysis of the offences that these men committed and the responses they received. The most common victims are shown to be people with intellectual disabilities, women staff, children and women in the general public. Variation is found between the nature of the offences across victim groups, with people with intellectual disabilities being on the receiving end of the most serious forms of assault. Seriousness of the assaults was also found to be dependent on the ability of the perpetrator. The responses to the men were not found to be correlated with the nature of the sexual abuse but to whom was abused: the abuse of children and women in the general public giving rise to the strongest responses. Protection of victims from subsequent abuse was also related to this specific variable: here people with intellectual disabilities and women staff gained the least protection. Attempts to isolate predictive factors of abusive behaviour proved unsuccessful. For example, abusers and non-abusers within the sample had experienced sexual abuse themselves at similar rates. The study draws attention to the high proportion of men receiving intellectual disability services who appear not to have intellectual disabilities and the poor level of risk management of men with histories of sexually abusing.Only recently has the sexually abusive behaviour of men with intellectual disabilities been recognised in the literature. Primarily this literature consists of case-study descriptions ( e.g. Sgroi, 1989;Griffiths et al., 1989). The two major sources of quantitative information are incidence studies of the sexual abuse of people with intellectual disabilities which find men with intellectual disabilities as a significant perpetrator group (e.g. Brown et al., 1995), and the identification of men with intellectual disabilities amongst men who have been detained in either hospitals or prisons for their abusive sexual behaviour (e.g. Murrey et al., 1992;Knopp, 1984;Walker & Biles, 1986). Together these two quantitative perspectives are deficient in profiling the abuse by men with intellectual disabilities which is directed at people without intellectual disabilities or which does not result in some form of detention. The following study takes a different window onto the behaviour of men with intellectual disabilities by examining referrals to the Sex Education Team (SET): a specialised service set up to support the sexual needs of people with intellectual disabilities (see McCarthy & Thompson, 1991). Of the 120 male referrals in the total sample, 75 men (the 'abusers') were identified as having allegedly perpetrated some form of sexual abuse, providing the largest sample group of its kind to date. For a further 3 men 1360-2322/97/02 0125-15 $lO.OO/O

Trailing behind the recent acknowledgement of the high incidence of sexual abuse amongst people with intellectual disabilities is a recognition of men with intellectual disabilities as perpetrators of sexual abuse. This paper reviews the North American, Australian and British literature published in this area. It demonstrates that both theoretical understandings and clinical interventions with men with intellectual disabilities are often discordant with wider perspectives of work with sexual abusers.The effect of this is shown to be common discriminatory practice received by men with intellectual disabilities which at times shows poor regard for their rights.

The specific role of ethnicity in the experience of bullying was examined, with a sample of 33 pairs of Asian and white children, matched for gender, age, and school. Each child was interviewed individually, using a modified version of the Olweus questionnaire. No differences by ethnicity were found for reports of enjoying school; having friends at school; disliking other children; likelihood and frequency of being bullied; and likelihood and frequency of bullying others. For those children being bullied, no differences by ethnicity were found for where it happened, or the likelihood of getting help. However, significant difference by ethnicity was found for racist name‐calling; one‐half of the bullied Asian children, but none of the bullied white children in this sample, were called names about their colour. This racist name‐calling appeared hurtful to the recipients and was often a reason for disliking other children. Racist name‐calling should clearly be one focus of work in schools against bullying.

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In Vol. 7 No. 1 of Support for Learning we reported the initial findings of research into bullying conducted by Peter Smith and his colleagues at Sheffield University. Now, two years on, the team look at the incidence of bullying among children with special needs in mainstream schools. Their research concludes that statemented pupils, on the whole, are more likely to be victimised. General intervention strategies initiated by schools are effective in reducing bullying in this group without the need for specific targeting. We are, nevertheless, left with the worrying thought that this may not be necessarily true for the large number of pupils without statements who suffer some form of learning disability.