04/29/2026
Hey. I'm tired tonight, honestly. But I can't let April slip by without saying something, so here we go.
This is Theresa Metzmaker, Her Power founder. It is impotent to not that Her Power Her Pride was founded on ending violence of girls with disabilities. So the response to child abuse is a personal one.
It's Child Abuse Prevention Month, and I (Theresa Metzmaker) need to talk about disabled kids and the rooms where decisions about them get made without them.
Real quick on the numbers, because they matter. In 2024 Michigan confirmed 23,433 child victims of abuse and neglect. 8,552 of our kids were removed from their homes. Between 2015 and 2019, 332 Michigan children died from abuse and neglect, and the real number is likely two to three times higher than what gets reported.
Now disability. Kids with disabilities are abused at almost three and a half times the rate of other kids. Three times more likely to experience sexual abuse, even higher for kids with intellectual or mental health disabilities. Autistic kids enter foster care at 2.4 times the rate of their peers. Kids with intellectual disabilities, 1.9 times the rate. When researchers look at who dies from child abuse, autism, developmental disabilities, and physical disabilities show up over and over again.
And let me be clear about something. The only people who can truly end child abuse are perpetrators. They are the ones doing it. Full stop. But for those of us doing the work of reducing risk factors, building protective ones, and changing the conditions kids grow up in, we have got to do better. That's where programs like ou Her Power, Her Pride! Camp at MDRC come in. Four days with teen girls with disabilities, building disability pride, identity, voice, community. Tearing down the messages they get told about who they are supposed to be. That is risk reduction. A girl who knows her worth, who has language for her body, who has a community that sees her, is a girl who is harder to harm in silence. Who knows shame reduction. Look it up if you don't know it.
So here is the thing that has me worked up tonight, every night. The tables where policy gets written. The committees deciding who responds when a call comes in. The workgroups deciding where prevention dollars go. Disabled advocates are not at those tables. Or one of us is, as a token, with no actual power. A panelist, a token spokeswoman.
And before anyone says "we have behavioral health at the table," no. Stop. BH is not the disability community. I love our BH partners but that is a different lane, ( while admittedly the right bh individual may identify as part of the disability community, those that do would acknowledge we need disability advocates at the table). That’s who I am talking about the advocates working on AAC and assistive technology. The people doing community inclusion work. The people rejecting shame and stigma. The people teaching bodily autonomy in ways that actually include disabled kids. Disabled adults who lived through this system as kids and can tell you, in detail, where it failed them.
If you are sitting on a board or a committee or a task force or a funding workgroup doing child abuse prevention work in Michigan, look around tomorrow. Who is at your table. Who is not. Who is being talked about without being there.
Bring us in. Pay us. Give us a real seat with real power, not a panelist invite once a year.
Nothing about us, without us. In policy. In response. In prevention.
Okay. Going to bed.
Theresa
