In the past five years, over 550 people with disabilities have been murdered by their parents.
Every year on March 1, the disability community gathers across the nation to remember disabled victims of filicide (disabled people murdered by their family members or caregivers).
We see the same pattern repeating over and over again. A parent kills their disabled child. The media portrays these murders as justifiable and inevitable due to the “burden” of having a disabled person in the family. If the parent stands trial, they are given sympathy and comparatively lighter sentences, if they are sentenced at all. The victims are disregarded, blamed for their own murder at the hands of the person they should have been able to trust the most, and ultimately forgotten. And then the cycle repeats.
Since 2012, ASAN, ADAPT, Not Dead Yet, the National Council on Independent Living, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, the American Association of People with Disabilities, The Arc, and other disability rights organizations have come together at local vigils across the country to mourn those losses, bring awareness to these tragedies, and demand justice and equal protection under the law for all people with disabilities. On March 1, 2018 we will come together again, and we ask you to join us.
Site coordinators are a vital part of the Disability Day of Mourning. Site coordinators secure space in their communities to hold a vigil, do outreach to community members leading up to the vigil, and document their vigils through pictures or videos to honor those lost to filicide.
- Sign up to be a Day of Mourning vigil site coordinator
- Learn more about what site coordinators do in the Site Coordinator’s Guidebook (PDF)
More Information and Resources:
- Anti-Filicide Toolkit
- Disability-Memorial.org: a memorial to the people with disabilities who were victims of filicide
- About the Day of Mourning
