My name is Dr. Claire Robson and I like to introduce a project I have been working on for a few years.
‘Indigo Survivors Project: Firsthand accounts of elder abuse from LGBTQ2SA+ people.
The research tells us that queer and trans people are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect by those they should be able to trust (because of shared increased risk factors, mistrust of the healthcare system, and failure of many institutions and organizations to pay attention to marginalized populations). Though we’ve known for years that this was an issue, and there’ve been several calls to action, very little has been done.
Our project addresses this gap. Its purpose is to
1) learn more about the conditions in which abuse of LGBTQ elders occurs
2) support the agency and resilience of LGBTQ elder abuse survivors
3) expand and complicate our theorizing of queer elder abuse
4) publish a trade anthology of stories by and about elder abuse in the LGBTQ2SA+ community. It is our hope that these stories will raise awareness of the problem of elder abuse in the LGBTQ2SA+ community, as well as offer support to survivors.
I am sharply aware of the courage it will take for survivors to share their stories. We are providing counseling support and hopefully the resources needed for an ongoing participant-led support group.
Please help by sharing this call for participants out as widely as possible.
Our project is a partnership between Simon Fraser’s Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and QMUNITY (BC’s Queer, Trans, and Two Spirit Resource Centre).
Please email me at [email protected] or [email protected] for more information.