Actually, this makes sense, because abusers may well choose their targets for their vulnerability.

I once was in a relationship that I fled from when the guy's controlling behavior scared me.

Seemed like the nicest guy in the world (so said everyone), but at some point he decided we would be married, leave the city we lived in, and buy his parents home in the suburbs.

And nowhere in that process was I asked if I wanted -- or agreed -- to any of those things that would shape my life.

At one point, while pushing this marriage he also pushed me into an anxiety attack. I'd never had one before (or since) and thought I was having a heart attack -- but he wasn't particularly sympathetic during or after that attack.

I asked him to move out of my apartment, and he refused, insisting I'd change my mind.

Finally, one day we were on the street, he put his hands on my shoulders and shook me, when and said, "Wait til we get home, then I'll really give it to you."

I said to a woman passing by, "Call the police." In the days before the domestic violence laws had passed, the police refused to step in, so asked them to hold him on that corner until I got away.

I warned him he had three days to get out, until I had the locks changed, which I did one day when he was at work.

I'd had an emotionally abusive father, which is why I don't think I saw the warning signs in this gy, but my father had at least spared me physical abuse, which may be why I finally ran at the first sign.

And my intuition about that turned out to be correct.

His mother later called me to ask why I didn't want to marry him. "Because I think he was going start hitting me."

I said, and after a very pregnant pause, she admitted, "His father beats me, and it's ruined my life.

Six months later when I was on the subway, I ran into a secretary in his office, who told me that they were engaged.

She was more vulnerable than I was, a single mother with little education, and surrounded by everyone at work who thought he was the nicest guy in the world.

But when she told me they were engaged, she didn't look happy about it, and since I'd last seen her, she'd developed dark rings under her eyes.

And I thought, "He's started in on her already."

It's actually not just intimate partner violence: disabled people are more likely than other people to face all kinds of abuse. Disabled women are more likely to be sexually assaulted than other women. Disabled children are more likely to be physically abused by their parents than other children.

The reasons for this, I suspect, are pretty complex, but they probably include that disabled people are more likely to be in institutional settings, which in general leave people vulnerable to abuse, that disabled people are often isolated and have a difficult time reporting abuse and being believed when they do, that the caretakers of disabled people are often isolated and frustrated themselves. And it can't help that mentally ill people end up imprisoned in vastly disproportionate numbers.