Safety, abuse and mate crime

Mate crime is abuse or exploitation by someone the victim considers a friend. The term comes from British learning-disability services. In June 2009 the Association for Real Change, a UK charity, announced a three-year project funded by the Department of Health on "'Mate Crime' and people with learning disabilities", describing "'friends' who go on to abuse the trust placed in them".¹ A 2011 inquiry into disability-related harassment in Great Britain credited the charity with coining the term, for "the exploitation, abuse or theft from people with a learning disability, by those they consider as their friends".² The earliest journal paper with the term in its title found in this research appeared the same year.³

Researchers do not agree on what kind of crime it is. A 2014 paper drawing on a literature review argued that mate crime had not yet been identified in scholarly research under any name and that it differs from other forms of hate crime and abuse.⁴ A 2020 case study of police records used the term "exploitative familiarity" and found that isolated disabled people were often victimized in their own homes by locals.⁵ A study of five autistic adults defined it as a subset of hate crime in which the victim knows the perpetrator.⁶

Prosecution guidance in England and Wales says the term is used by some disability organizations to raise awareness, but "It is not CPS policy to use this term, as it is potentially confusing to people with learning disabilities."⁷

Only one study has asked autistic adults about mate crime by name. In interviews with five autistic adults in the UK, all had been bullied. They understood the idea of mate crime but were unsure whether they would recognize it in their own lives, and they described distancing themselves from the label of disability while growing up.⁶ In a study in which 102 autistic adults completed an online survey or a spoken interview about being hurt by people they knew, from an overlapping team, some took a long time to recognize what had happened as wrong, and those who sought help often had bad experiences with professionals such as police.⁸

How common mate crime is among autistic people has not been measured. Surveys of victimization by friends, and autistic adults' own accounts of finding it hard to say no and to spot manipulation, are covered in Friendship and Friendship.

How often autistic adults report sexual violence, at higher rates than others in several surveys, is covered in Dating and couples. Newer studies show the picture differs by type of abuse. In a US online survey of 663 adults, autistic adults were more likely than non-autistic adults to report non-contact sexual victimization and assault-level victimization, but not technology-facilitated victimization or sex after verbal pressure. Women reported more in every category, and, in an exploratory comparison, people who suspected they were autistic without a diagnosis reported rates like those of the diagnosed group. In exploratory analyses, sensory reactivity went with sexual victimization, most strongly non-contact victimization.⁹ Among US young people who had been in a relationship in the past year, the share who reported dating violence was about the same for autistic youth (40.7%) and non-autistic youth (38.0%).¹⁰

Some researchers argue that those higher rates reflect circumstances more than autism itself. A narrative review on autistic women argues that their higher exposure to violence comes from gendered social exclusion, unequal access to support, the harms of masking and stigma, and should be treated "as a complex social issue rather than one of individual vulnerability".¹¹ In a related study by the same first author, fourteen Australian practitioners who support autistic women who have survived sexual and domestic violence described reducing the processing load of their services and working with survivors' connected needs, and described the strain of working within systems that do not affirm autistic people. These are practitioners' accounts, not survivors'.¹²

No study found as of October 2026 has measured coercive control in autistic adults.

Autistic children are more often reported to child protection services. In South Carolina, linking autism surveillance records with child-protection records, children with autism and no intellectual disability had 1.86 times the odds of population controls of being reported for maltreatment and 1.51 times the odds of having it substantiated, after adjustment; for autistic children with an intellectual disability the figures were 2.35 and 1.97, and for children with an intellectual disability alone 2.45 and 2.49; the groups were not compared with each other directly. Physical neglect was raised in every group.¹³ A 2023 meta-analysis pooled five studies of child abuse among autistic people at 16%, with a wide margin of error (4% to 31%) and very different results between studies.³⁰ Among 1,805 substantiated cases in Quebec, 4.0% of the children had an autism diagnosis recorded by child protection services; these children more often had an intellectual disability than other maltreated children.¹⁴ In a US study of girls aged 6 to 12, parents reported more adverse childhood experiences for 112 autistic girls than for 100 typically developing girls. In both groups, more such experiences went with more depression and anxiety, measured at one time.¹⁵

In autistic people, experiences of interpersonal violence go with more anxiety and depression and with more suicidal thoughts and behavior. A meta-analysis of nine studies, with 3,647 autistic participants, found moderate associations for both. The review's narrative synthesis of 57 mostly cross-sectional studies, not pooled statistically, reported more difficulties linked to violence in women and gender minorities, and, in five studies, worse mental health and behavioral difficulties linked to violence in autistic than in non-autistic participants from childhood.¹⁶

Trauma may be missed in autistic adults who also have an intellectual disability. Among 88 such adults referred for mental health assessment in Norway, 34.1% had been exposed to violence and 17.0% to sexual abuse, but only 3.4% had a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, which the authors read as likely under-recognition. Exposure went with behavior that services describe as challenging.¹⁷

Financial exploitation of autistic people has barely been studied on its own. A 2025 scoping review of exploitation of people with cognitive impairments found 20 studies, eight of them on financial exploitation and most about intellectual disability or mental health conditions; it concluded that cognitive impairment raises vulnerability but that the evidence is sparse.¹⁸ In England, an analysis by an overlapping group found that national safeguarding data lack the detail to show how cognitive impairment relates to exploitation, and that safeguarding investigations for adults not previously in contact with services have increased.¹⁹

Lab evidence does not show a general difficulty in spotting bad intentions, though autistic adults describe one in their own accounts. In one experiment, 102 autistic and 95 non-autistic adults listened to audio scenarios, as if taking part, in which cues gradually emerged that the other person was drawing them into a crime. The two groups were similarly suspicious and responded in similar ways. Marked difficulty reading others' minds and low verbal ability went with poorer responses whether or not people were autistic, though such difficulty was more common in the autistic group.²⁰

Cuckooing is someone moving into a disabled person's home, perhaps claiming to help, to get access to food, clothes, drugs or benefits. Disabled people described it to the 2011 UK inquiry; in one account, a new "friend" invited to stay kept at least three quarters of the host's benefit.² The UK's Crime and Policing Act 2026 creates an offense, not yet in force, of controlling another person's home without their consent so that it can be used for certain listed crimes.²¹

Research on grooming and sexual exploitation has looked at young people with special educational needs or learning disabilities in general, not autistic girls. A review of 13 UK studies, mostly qualitative, of young people with special educational needs such as intellectual disability or autism, and of their parents and practitioners, found that beliefs and stereotypes about vulnerability and risk had left these young people "misinformed and misunderstood". Adults' anxiety about sex and abuse polarized their views on how such education should be done.²² Twenty-seven young people with learning disabilities who had experienced sexual exploitation, or were at risk of it, were interviewed in a UK study about how their needs could be met.²³

Sexual violence often starts young. In a self-selected French online survey of 225 autistic women, of 199 who reported sexual violence, 135 had first been assaulted at 18 or younger and 112 at 15 or younger.²⁴

Autistic people receive less sex education than others, a meta-analysis of mostly cross-sectional studies with widely varying results found. Its authors argue that fewer chances to learn both formally and informally, from peers, leave autistic people at a "double disadvantage".²⁵ A Dutch randomized trial of a sex-education program for 189 autistic adolescents aged 12 to 18, without intellectual disability, improved knowledge and understanding of boundaries compared with a waiting list, with effects lasting to 12 months and strongest in younger teenagers. Problematic sexual behavior fell in both groups alike, and the trial did not measure victimization.²⁶ A six-session online class on healthy relationships, written and taught with autistic people, was tested on 55 autistic adults in the US without a comparison group; their sensitivity to rejection fell, and loneliness did not change.²⁷ A pilot of trauma-focused therapy by video call for 17 autistic young people aged 10 to 17 found large falls in post-traumatic stress symptoms, also without a comparison group.²⁸

How police question victims matters as well. In 96 Norwegian police interviews with people aged 5 to 70 with intellectual disabilities or autism who reported abuse, 16 of them autistic and most of the cases sexual offenses, only 2.6% of all questions were open questions, and about half invited a yes or no. These are figures for the whole sample, mostly people with intellectual disabilities; question use varied within and across the groups.²⁹

Carly Jones, an autistic advocate writing for professionals, defines mate crime as "a false friend who seeks a vulnerable person to befriend while having an underlying agenda to exploit and abuse them", and gives everyday examples: a visitor who comes only on payday, a new friend who wants to stay rent free in a first flat, friends who use a girl for lifts and never pay for fuel. Jones advises watching for "sudden, new friendships" and for money or possessions that change without explanation.^c1 Pete Wharmby, who describes learning the term only recently, writes that autistic people are prone to it "not because we’re gullible, but because we’re often quite trusting, especially when people are kind to us", and calls it "not a specific autistic thing – it’s a trauma thing". Wharmby asks friends and family to act as "another layer of safeguarding" without being "overbearing and patronising".^c2 A contributor writing as Planet Autism puts it plainly: "If someone is nice to me, I think they mean it."^c3

On abuse by partners, Jones writes that "The abuser is the one to blame" and describes domestic violence that "often occurs for longer for an Autistic young woman", in one case because moving home would have upended her autistic children's routines. Jones also warns that "The ability to talk in no way correlates to the ability to ask for help."^c4,c5 Jules Edwards, writing as an Indigenous and autistic woman, points out that there are no statistics on the risk for developmentally disabled people of color, and that talks about autism and the police rarely ask how to "communicate with an autistic victim".^c7,c6