'Treat People Like People' campaign highlights power of people with disabilities

This spring, two of Minnesota’s foremost advocacy agencies faced a marketing dilemma: How to create a campaign against abuse of people with disabilities without reinforcing negative stereotypes of them as frail and helpless?

Months of research, interviews and focus groups have culminated in a simple but powerful campaign built around the lived experiences of people with disabilities and a four-word slogan, “Treat People Like People.”

The campaign, which launched last week, marks the first time that Minnesotans with disabilities have played a central role in the messaging of a statewide campaign to prevent abuse and neglect. And unlike many anti-abuse campaigns, which reduce victims to impassive caricatures, “Treat People Like People” features people with disabilities as fully actualized humans, with voices and dreams of their own.

While still being polished, the campaign is already drawing praise from a collection of disability rights groups, violence researchers and marketing experts, who see it as a critical tool in the state’s efforts to combat the epidemic of violence against adults with disabilities. The numbers are staggering: In 2018 alone, state and local agencies received more 56,000 allegations of abuse, neglect and financial exploitation of adults with disabilities; that includes 11,460 allegations of physical and sexual abuse, according to state data.

“Clearly, what we have been doing is not working, so we have to change the way we think about people with disabilities,” said Roberta Opheim, state ombudsman for mental health and developmental disabilities and one of the architects of the campaign.

The new campaign is notable for what it’s not: Alarming, sensationalistic or grotesque.

The creative staff at the Minneapolis-based advertising agency Russell Herder reviewed anti-abuse campaigns in more than a dozen states and countries, including Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Many of these campaigns aim to shock: there are graphic images of sobbing children, bruised and beaten women and terrified or cowering senior citizens. Celebrities, including Angelina Jolie and Madonna, have appeared beaten, bruised and disfigured in anti-violence ads.

The problem with such shock-and-outrage campaigns, says Nancy Fitzsimons, a social work professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, is that they “reinforce the false otherness” of abuse victims, and perpetuate the misperception that people with disabilities are inherently weak or powerless. The campaigns also focus on physical or sexual violence, and fail to recognize the routine indignities and less-visible forms of abuse that people with disabilities face each day, she said.

“The moment that an individual is regarded as `less than,’ then it is easier to dehumanize them,” said Brian Herder, chief creative officer at Russell Herder. “So the idea here is ... to show people with disabilities as fully realized, fully informed and fully engaged people.”

‘Quiet the rushing thoughts’

Among the campaign’s co-creators is Sarah Bender, a 48-year-old artist and former special-education teacher who has cognitive disabilities.

In 2003, Bender had parts of her brain surgically removed to alleviate her epilepsy, and seizures that were so frequent that she couldn’t speak. The surgery left Bender with short-term memory loss, bouts of anxiety and difficulties processing information. She likens her brain to “an old guy who keeps filing information in the wrong cabinets,” creating bouts of disorientation.

Yet Bender said people frequently make false assumptions based on her disabilities. One is that she is incapable of creative achievement. In fact, after her surgery, Bender discovered that art was therapeutic, enabling her to “quiet the rushing thoughts” in her brain. Bender has produced more than 100 original paintings and carvings. She is still finishing a brightly-colored landscape mural that covers nearly two walls of her Appley Valley apartment.

“It’s a reflection of my heart and my soul, and whatever needs to come out in the moment,” Bender said, explaining a painting with lush greenery and expanding suns.

Of the anti-abuse campaign, Bender said, “I prefer and appreciate the positive messaging, because I believe we have to assume the very best about people. Everyone has their issues, but that doesn’t mean we’re defined by them.”

For now, the “Treat People Like People” campaign consists of a website with personal stories and testimonials, informational posters, social media posts and tool kits on how to recognize and prevent abuse. There are video clips of Minnesotans with a range of disabilities singing, talking about their talents, and sharing their personal ambitions. The website also invites people to make an online pledge to “treat people like people,” with dignity and respect.

Much of the campaign’s content is directed at care providers, which are among the most common perpetrators.

National research has found that most violence against people with disabilities is perpetrated by people they know, including caregivers and relatives. In one harrowing case last year, a woman with intellectual disabilities was repeatedly sexually abused and impregnated at a St. Anthony group home by a male caregiver who worked there. And just last week, a male aide who worked at group homes in southwest Minnesota was charged with raping two adult residents with intellectual disabilities.

“The beauty of this campaign is that it recognizes that violence is perpetrated in a social context through relationships, and how we treat other humans is at the root of the problem,” said Fitzsimons, who is writing a book on interpersonal violence.

The campaign was spearheaded and funded by two state advocacy agencies -- the Office of Ombudsman for Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities and the Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities. The heads of both agencies insist they have bigger ambitions for the campaign, including television commercials, highway billboards and signs on buses, depending on future funding. So far, the agencies have spent less than $100,000 on the campaign.

“We are dreaming big,” Opheim said. “We want to promote the idea that people with disabilities are part of the essential fabric of society, are not `the other,’ and deserve to be treated the way you and I want to be treated.”

Chris Serres • 612-673-4308 @chrisserres

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