Katharine Quarmby
Award-winning writer, editor and journalist.
Tag: Scapegoat
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In this extract from my book, Scapegoat: why we are failing disabled people (Portobello, 2011), on Holocaust Memorial Day, I am sharing my analysis of how the T4 Nazi killing machine was inspired by eugenics enthusiasts in the UK and the US. It’s a grim read, I’m afraid, but important to remember why so many…
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Yesterday, like a lot of people, judging from Facebook and Twitter, I watched Sally Phillip’s documentary, about her own experience of having a much loved son, Olly, who has Down’s, (and two other children), and also about the wider picture once a new screening programme goes live. This new screen is non-invasive and it’s thought…
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About a month ago, I designed and sent out a short survey about disability hate crime, concentrating on motivation, but also covering a few other questions such as location of incidents, gender and race of attackers and nature of the incident or attack. This was done under the auspices of the Disability Hate Crime Network,…
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Over the last few years many disability hate crime campaigners have called for perpetrator analysis. I am one of those: I have been advocating for it since 2008, when I wrote the disability hate crime report, Getting Away With Murder, (for the UK Disabled People’s Council, Disability Now magazine and Scope). At the (British) Disability Hate Crime Network,…
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I took off for a quick trip to Norway last week, at the kind invitation of the Norwegian Network on Disability, to talk about my journalism uncovering disability hate crime way back in 2007 – though of course it’s an ongoing project – with the help of many activists, journalists and a few senior police…
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I enjoyed doing my talk at the Wadham Human Rights Forum at Oxford University, on how human rights journalism is evolving in the age of the Internet – and how to fund the new human rights journalism. The Forum has had some wonderful thinkers visit – from Clive Stafford-Smith to James Harding, former editor of…
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An innocent Iranian, Bijan Ebrahimi, is dead, another name to add to the grim list of disabled people falsely accused of sexual crimes they didn’t commit- and then cruelly murdered. I grieve for him and his family. I share an Iranian heritage too, on my birth father’s side. (If you want to read about my…
Katharine Quarmby 