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If your therapist told you that, they have a moral and legal requirement to report it.
Your therapist is doing the right thing. Your family is actively harmful and you need to get out of there somehow.
Unfortunately, I'm disabled, jobless, and have nobody to go to. I would have left long ago if it were so easy for me to leave.
I agree with the principle, but in practice, the violence of American capitalism is what keeps me trapped here more than anything. If I end up on the street as a result of these interventions, I will freeze to death because the system doesn't protect from homelessness. This kind of intervention would work great in a socialist society with guaranteed basic housing and sustenance, but that isn't the reality right now. The reality is a system that brutalizes the most vulnerable and leaves them to die.
If you're disabled there are most likely programs to help you with food and housing.
It's usually not that simple. And "most likely" does not a foolproof logistical plan make.
Can confirm, disabled for 11 years now. You either rely on someone else, or die.
Sure, but how does that help OP? They have to apply, wait, letters come in the mail, people start asking questions, and in an abusive household, that can be a problem.
And let's say they get food assistance, what next? They still live with the problem people. Now they have to arramge for a new place to live. They're handicapped, so they can't work, so how is this getting paid for? What about expenses other than food or housing?
And the entire time this is getting arranged, dangerous people are going to be seeing clues.
There are a LOT of hoops to jump through to get safe.
I guess they should just give up and do nothing instead
No, but this is a complex problem, and I'm pointing out that your suggestion is not as easy as it sounds, and won't really accomplish much. If she manages to get food assistance, the others will probably just take it away from her.
She needs a social services advocate who can get her into a shelter, while she waits for various assistance programs to kick in.
Depending on where they are, it's most likely not enough, and that's if they can even qualify in the first place. Even people will well-documented disabilities struggle to get on assistance programs in some areas
following the law is so often, as here, not the right thing to do.
As someone who was a mandated reporter and made a sad amount of reports, the investigators aren’t idiots. They don’t knock on your door and say “hi, your kid reported that you hit them!” They know the risk and it is literally their entire life/job to avoid making situations worse.
How can they help OP, though? If it really is that obvious that it was OP who reported it, I don't see how saying "Hi, we got an anonymous report, we're here to investigate" would suddenly remove any suspicion by OP's family that it was OP who did it.
Depending on where OP lives, disability programs can be very difficult to and backlogged to get into.
With that said, it sounds like OP is planning on leaving anyway.
For the latter part, it very much depends on the state and the disability.
In terms of helping, there are a few scenarios. First, forced psychiatric hospitalization. Suddenly, it’s no longer a “secret” problem with the brother. It’s known and he’d have a record in a court system and medical records. Extremely unlikely, but not impossible, is removing OP to a stable program. People with disabilities who have confirmed cases of abuse jump to the top of those waitlists. There are also many “light” versions of those scenarios that still make things, even slightly, better.
What do they do then? Wouldn't it be obvious that the person who just started therapy said something?
You’d be surprised at the number of times I thought it would be obvious and it wasn’t. In fact, it seemed pretty rare that people could figure it out. And even when they did, it was just their hunch, you can never know for sure who reported you.