Their Own Words: People With Intellectual Disabilities Talk About Rape

His impact lives on:

Sharing from: Joe Shapiro: 

When the language officially changed and "intellectual disability" replaced "mental retardation", L. Thomas Mangrum (below, right) told me for an NPR story he sure didn't like the old language but he wasn't a fan of the new one, either. "When you talk about intellectual disabilities, that makes you sound like you're dumb, you know, to say that." I included the D.C. self-advocate in the last story of my series on the epidemic of sexual assault of people with intellectual disabilities. He started to cry. Not when talking about the assault, but about not being believed. "They think if you've got a disability, that means you lie, that you can't really tell the truth or you don't know what the truth is." I'm sad to learn of Thomas's death at age 61. Hear his powerful voice:

To read more on this story, click here: In Their Own Words: People With Intellectual Disabilities Talk About Rape

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