Community Forum for People with Disability on Proposed Hate Crime Laws

Villamanta Disability Rights Legal Service Inc

Virtual community forum about proposed amendments to hate crime legislation to include disability as a protected category.

Villamanta Disability Rights Legal Service invites people with disability and self-advocates to participate in a virtual community forum about proposed amendments to hate crime legislation.The amendments would include disability as a category of targeted groups that can be protected by the hate crime legislation.We will have people with disability speak about their experiences and invite other attendees to share their stories if they wish.Villamanta will be making submissions to support the new legislation, and we hope to gather community opinions and to use people’s deidentified comments in our report.We are proud to be joined for this important discussion by disability self-advocates Aunty Jane Rosengrave, Sam Connor and Phoenix McDonough.Aunty Jane is a proud Yorta Yorta woman and Elder. She lives with an intellectual disability and is a strong self-advocate with Reinforce Self-Advocacy and Self-Advocacy Resource Unit. She is involved with Open Place, a support and advocacy service for people who were institutionalised as children. Aunty Jane is a survivor of institutionalised abuse and family violence but she’s now “free as a bird”.Phoenix McDonough is a self-advocate with a great deal of lived experience in the disability space. A member of Brain Injury Matters, Deaf Blind Victoria and many other disability organisations, Phoenix’s work focuses on improving access to resources for self-advocates.Sam Connor is a disability and human rights activist, especially in advocating for people with Autism and ADHD. She was previously the Vice-President of People with Disability Australia, and she has a particular interest in the prevention of violence against people with disability.

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