WARNING: this update contains references to sexual assault and abuse.

Choice, the right to intimate sexual relationships, resident-to-resident violence, and balance between dignity-of-risk and duty-of-care will be in focus during the third disability services hearing, which opened today.

The hearing will consider two group homes run by Life Without Barriers. In opening the hearing, Counsel Assisting noted that stories from two residents of the ‘Lismore house’ will include sexual assault: one, alleged, by a support worker; the other by a man the resident had been on a date with outside the house.