The Parents' Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (智障者家長總會) and experts yesterday urged the public to keep an open mind toward mentally handicapped people and asked the government to integrate its departments to offer better help and resources for these people.
"Only 6 percent of mentally handicapped people in Taiwan have obtained professional care, while the other 94 percent are still cared for by their families," said Sun I-hsin (孫一信), the association's deputy secretary-general.
According to a Chinese-language newspaper report on Sunday, a single mother of two mentally handicapped sons in Kaohsiung had sex with her children for four years because she feared her two sons might rape other women on uncontrolled sexual impulses.
She first had sex with her older son four years ago when he was 16, then her younger son demanded sex after seeing what happened between his brother and mother.
Recently, the mother decided to seek the help of medical professionals because her second son started to attack her and injure himself after she started to reject his sexual advances.
Sun said he was unhappy with the way the doctor who treated the family had revealed the story to the media.
He said the doctor should not have told the media about the case explicitly, but consulted Kaohsiung City's social welfare department first. Sun also complained about the inefficiency of the authorities in dealing with mentally handicapped people.
"Our social welfare system adopts a passive attitude -- unless families take the initiative to ask for help or some tragic event occurs, the welfare system won't intervene and keep track of the mentally handicapped," Sun said.
Sun said this case showed that the burden of caring for mentally handicapped people still falls on families. He said there was no data showing mentally handicapped were more likely than normal people to commit sexual crimes.
PFP Legislator Chin Hui-chu (
Chin said she had heard of other unusual cases that could distort the public's view of mentally handicapped people. In one, a woman forced her handicapped daughter to have a hysterectomy because she was worried the daughter would get pregnant. In another, a man took his handicapped son to a brothel to satisfy the son's sexual needs.
Chin said tragedies and uninformed solutions to problems occurred because of the lack of help from the government.
Professor Ko Ping-shun (
"The mentally handicapped are definitely teachable and it just takes a well-planned program, which is what we lack," Ko said.
He said the government should integrate its departments dealing with education, health and social welfare and start to track the mentally handicapped as early as possible and give them help when necessary.
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