Although these numbers are horrible, it can be worth remembering that these are apparently from one research study, and we don’t even know all the details of how they chose their sampling size, etc. I would imagine that the numbers would vary widely depending partly on disability, partly on sampling within that disability group, and partly on individual circumstances. For example, I would hypothesize that for a deaf child, having some clear modality for communication at home (either having strong speaking/lipreading skills, or having parents who sign, or a combination of the two) would be somewhat protective in giving a child more inner strength to protest when they feel uncomfortable with what an adult is doing, or at least a way to report what’s happening to their parents.

But, yes, it’s still awful. Even though it is hard to know how “generalizable” the results of any one individual research study is, there has still been enough research done that we can know with a pretty high degree of confidence that children with a wide range of disabilities are at much higher risk than non-disabled children for abuse. Elsewhere in the UNICEF report (which you have now evidently read), it says the risk is estimated to be 1.7 times higher. And children with certain disabilities may well be perceived as being more “vulnerable” (and thus easier to abuse with impunity) than others.

Sadly, in some places, this kind of pervasive abuse may simply be seen as routine. A while ago, I had a classmate who visited a school/institution for people with intellectual disabilities (I forget which country). She found that they regularly sterilized the girls there to “protect” them from pregnancy in the case of rape or sexual abuse. But they apparently did not consider doing anything to stop the abuse itself–for them, sterlization was the answer. She tried to talk to them about the idea of preventing the abuse in the first place but wasn’t sure she even got anywhere with them. :-(