A Lack of Services

TRIGGER WARNING: descriptions of murder and filicide.

A couple are married for six years. Things are good at first, but the wife gets into an accident and has long term injuries that stop her from being able to work. She is still quite happy with her situation and does her best around the house. Still, they struggle a bit and even though the wife feels she is contributing in her own way, the husband starts to see her as a burden.

He tries to access local rehabilitation services, but there are long waiting lists. By the time they are offered, the wife doesn't want to go. She doesn't feel she needs them and is happy enough. She doesn't understand why her husband can't accept her as she is and is always trying to find new treatments to change her.

The husband is unable to force her or control her and becomes more and more annoyed with the situation. Rather than look for help or counselling for himself, he continues to try and change her. She is the one with the injury! She is the problem! He feels like all his money and time goes into caring for her and she does nothing to repay him.

He decides the best course of action is to kill her. She won't cooperate with what he wants and it's better to take her out of her misery. If he can't love her, surely no one else can!

So one night he suffocates her in her sleep. That was the nice thing to do. He is a little disturbed with himself, so he takes a bunch of pills, half-heartedly trying to kill himself. He ends up just throwing up and calling 911 to admit what he's done.

The news reports show happy pictures of the couple from before she was injured. They show recent pictures of her, injured, but with a broad smile, full of life. The reports paint the husband as an evil man, a sick man without compassion. Neighbours say they never expected such a callous thing to happen in their town. They knew the wife struggled, but she was a sweet woman nevertheless and everyone loved her smile. The citizens rally for justice for her. They want the husband to rot in jail. No mercy for him!
The husband is eventually tried and gets a life sentence.

The fictional story above is too often a reality for some families. The only difference is instead of a husband, it's a mother. Instead of a injured wife, it's an autistic child. And instead of citizens demanding justice, they feel sympathy. The apologise for the mother's actions. They make excuses for her behaviour and they ask why more services weren't offered to her to help her cope with her burden. They forget about the child - the innocent child - or paint them as needy, uncooperative, irredeemable. They spend an inordinate amount of time looking into the history and finding every moment the child may have become frustrated or lashed out. "Once he punched his mother," they say. "There was no fixing him." So what's a mother to do? Kill him, of course!

And services. If we only had more services then innocent, caring mothers would never have to kill their own offspring! Yes, SERVICES. If we had more of them - more places to hide our imperfect children away when we adults lack coping skills - then that would stop normal healthy mothers from killing their burdensome children.

All over the world, every day, people struggle. People fall on hard times. They lose their jobs, they lose their homes, they go to bed hungry. Sometimes their kids behave badly. Sometimes their children hurt them. Despite all that, they don't. commit. murder. 

In the rare times they do, we don't turn around and say, "well, geez, if only someone had given them a new car or an extra food stamp that day, then maybe they wouldn't have killed someone!"

"You certainly can't blame him for committing murder, I mean the guy had just received a bad review at work the day before! Where were the services to help him?"

You can accuse me of black and white thinking, I really don't care. You can accuse me of not having a child horrible enough for me to understand. Go ahead. I say a healthy person doesn't consider their child horrible. A healthy person doesn't solve problems with murder.

A healthy adult walks away and gets help for themselves. A healthy adult takes responsibility for their own actions. A healthy and loving parent gives the child someone else, for a time or permanently, so that the child has the opportunity to grow and be loved by others.

I want you to know there are always other options. I want you to know you can show up on my doorstep, any time, day or night, with your child and I will not ask any questions. I will take them in, and I know plenty of other good people who would, too. PLEASE don't hurt or kill your child. They deserve more than that. They deserve life, whether you believe so or not.

Autism Is Not A Crime

If you've seen the news lately, you've heard the heinous crime committed by a young man who killed six people in a drive-by shooting in the US. My policy in this blog is I don't mention murderers by name, because I don't believe they deserve any more press or notoriety. I choose to focus on victims. Also a shame that this blog has already covered so many murders.

My issue at the moment with this particular murder is how the media has chosen to portray him. It is obvious from his videos prior that he was disturbed and troubled. Unfortunately, the fact his parents merely suspected he had Asperger's was enough to get the media to decide he was actually diagnosed as such. So it's important to note that his parents are not psychologists. He was apparently in therapy, but no diagnosis of Asperger's or ASD had been made.

What is even worse is that his parents were disturbed by the videos he made and contacted police. Police decided he posed no harm. Aside from his own crime, the negligence of the police to take these threats seriously is also a huge failing.

It should be noted that there is no correlation between violent crime and ASD. It should be noted a person with an ASD is much more likely to be a victim of violent crime.

Just for fun, let's entertain the possibility that he had Asperger's. I would argue he also had something else wrong with him that prompted him to murder, but Asperger's alone would not do it.

Being socially awkward or inept or different, is not a crime.

The media does not think of the ramifications of what having a stigma of "violent murderer" attached to "people with ASD" can do to us. It places us in increased danger for harassment and ostracization. They are contributing to the myths and misunderstandings that already surround us.

Let's put the blame on the murderer. Let's put the blame on the police. Let's not put the blame on a subset of the population who haven't done anything other than have a different brain.

This post is a contribution to the Autism Is Not A Crime Flashblog.

Another Autistic Life Taken

Press has been relatively quiet on this - I only found out about the story of Robert Robinson today - almost a month after his murder. The unfortunate thing is that, once again, we see the family and the press glossing right over the murder and using this unfortunate incident as a way of asking for more services.

Let's put the focus on the innocent party here. Robert was 16 and loved walking outdoors. I unfortunately don't know much else about him since the article did not make his death the focus. The focus fell on the "distraught mom."

So sad.

Why does this keep happening and why so much sympathy for murderers?

Can Special Needs Parents Trust Cops?

(Trigger warning: abuse of power, murder of disabled people, self-harm)

There have been some pretty horrible stories courtesy of American law enforcement lately. The first one concerns an Autistic teenager. An undercover cop befriended him, making the cop his first and only friend, and then pressured him to buy marijuana. After the poor boy finally caved (the cop demanded he buy him pot over 60 times before he did, and the boy started self-harming under all the pressure), the cop had him arrested.
What a waste of time and tax payer's money. Many other children were also targeted in this "operation" and the majority of them special needs.
Remember, this is only one story we're hearing about because the parents had the resources to fight this in court. For every story we hear, there are many, many more hiding in shame and silence.

I'm not sure why law enforcement is so short on work that they need to spend their time setting up disabled people. Isn't there something more productive they could do with their time?

The second story brings me to tears every time I think about it, but it's a story that needs to be heard: a man with Down's Syndrome was killed by off-duty police officers because he did not leave a movie theatre when asked. He had watched the movie once and wanted to stay and watch it again. His aide was with him and was working to calm him down and escort him out. However, some off-duty cops decided they weren't moving fast enough, so they restrained him and killed him. Apparently, the last words out of a man who idolized police were, "call my mom...it hurt."
Meanwhile, the cops still have their jobs and are living their lives.

There is just such a horrible lack of understanding concerning disabilities. I'm not saying that people with disabilities should get a free ride - if they are really dealing drugs or not paying for movies, then they need to be held responsible for those things - but the way these issues were handed should not have gone to the extremes of jail time and death.

It terrifies me to think of my son growing older and possibly being a target to the people who are supposed to protect us. What if someone starts yelling at him, tells him to put his hand up, but he doesn't react quickly enough or at all? What if he runs instead, out of fear? Or curls up on the ground in a ball? Will he be shot and killed because of that?

When someone doesn't react or act exactly as you expect, it doesn't make them dangerous, it makes them different. Everyone needs to realize this.

UPDATE: Ethan's family is now suing and hoping for a real court case.

Again?!

Yet another mother killed her children, one of which was Autistic. (Note to Daily Mail: "Doting" is not the correct adjective to use to describe the mother. "Murderous" would be more apt.)

Is there something in the water in the States? No seriously, what is the problem there? Because this doesn't seem to be happening in other countries that I know of.

Are they all copy-catting each other? Help me make sense of this.


Also, could someone send them a memo to let them know the correct order is to kill themselves FIRST then worry about the kids? They all seem to be doing it wrong.

EDIT: if you have the stomach to read the comments, notice the differences in the ABC News one, for example, where the child is not identified as being Autistic and compare that with the Daily Mail.

Being A Burden

He woke up often at night, scared. He would call out to me. I would sit with him and tell him jokes to ease his anxiety.

It was hard to get him to eat anything. He was picky and had problems chewing. He would choke easily and drool a lot. Eating was always a big mess. He did better with liquids, but I had to give him a straw and watch him carefully to make sure he didn't choke.

He had problems going to the bathroom by himself. I helped him pull his pants down and he'd sit on the toilet for what seemed like hours sometimes. He would later tell me it was difficult to coordinate and relax his muscles to do what they needed to do.

His balance was not good, so we had the help of a physiotherapist and OT. He didn't really like it, but eventually he did the exercises and got some confidence. I remember him walking with the aid of a support harness and the OT hanging on tightly to help keep him up. He still tired easily and fell often, sometimes hitting his head quite badly.

His speech was slurred and hard to understand, so we got him speech therapy. Again, he didn't always want to cooperate, but we all pushed him and supported him in his efforts.

Otherwise he spent most of his day quiet in front of the TV. Or sometimes he listened to music and closed his eyes. It was hard to get him to interact with me. And sometimes when he did, he was verbally abusive. He was very controlling about the way things should be in his room.

He was a challenge and a lot of work, but I love him and I never gave up on him.








I'm talking about my father before he died from Parkison's. I was his caregiver.



He never wanted to be considered a burden. That was his fear. I never considered him a burden, even if at times he did not make the process easy and he certainly wasn't always nice. He abused me verbally my whole life, up until just before he died.

I never once thought of killing him.

Do not tell me caring for someone with special needs is a burden. Do not tell me my father was a burden to society.

Do not tell me caring for my Autistic son is a burden. Do not tell me my son is a burden to society.

Do not tell me either of these situations makes it understandable to murder either of these people, no matter how abusive or difficult things get.


This was written for Flash Blog for Isabelle Stapleton

I'm A Mom, But I'm Not Like You

I'm writing this because I'm participating in a Flash Blog for Isabelle Stapleton - an Autistic child whose mother tried to kill her recently. I've written about it in my personal journal, with a lot more swearing, but I'll try to keep things rated PG-13 as much as possible here.

There is a lot of ridiculous justification going on regarding her mother, who was also a blogger. It seems a lot of other blogger moms somehow relate to her being "overwhelmed" - which is all speculation right now anyway since she hasn't spoken about it, as far as I know.

A lot of Autism Moms are crying for better/more services, which also is not the time or place for this. Last I checked, kids need food, clothing and love in order to grow. Most of the other stuff is bonus. They have a right to an education and they have a right to not be abused. You don't need tons of services to accomplish that. Lots of us, me included, have gotten by just fine without ever having a moment of ABA therapy - in fact, we may even progress best without it.
Suffering from a "lack of services" (whatever that really means) still doesn't give you license to murder.

There are plenty of special needs parents doing what they need to do every day without the thought of murder ever crossing their minds, services or not.

I can admit to being "overwhelmed" with life now and then. I tell my hubby I need a break and I do what I suspect most people do - go to bed. Some people may have an alcoholic drink to relax. Others might smoke a joint. Some might take a hot bath or grab a coffee, or do one the myriad of things SANE people do everyday that doesn't involve MURDER. I can get stressed out like the rest of them, but at no point does the thought to kill my child come into my mind!

Apparently, I've also been told that because I'm Autistic, I'm supposed to have sympathy for a murderer who apparently "snapped" and went insane. Because being a murderer is a mental health issue and obviously, Autistics are mental. Look, I'm aware ASD is in the DSM, but no where in the description does it list "homicidal tendencies." So no, sorry, but I don't relate to murderers in any way, shape or form.

Not only that, but people just "snapping" spontaneously happens very, very rarely. This mother may have had a pre-existing issue, such as depression, which she did not get help/treatment for. I can have sympathy for people with mental health issues. I have less sympathy for people who choose not to get treatment when their actions affect others. I have even less sympathy for close people around a sick person who also do nothing. You can't tell me there weren't any signs. The first sign should have been the horribly negative name for her blog. The second was the way she yelled at people providing her daughter services (I thought were supposed to be lacking?) when they didn't want to go along with the way she controlled every single aspect of her daughter's life. (Which I gleaned from the very small amount I've read of her horrible blog)

One person even suggested that maybe she just needed more "me time." Excuse me? "Me time"? How much "me time" do you possibly need? If you are just one short moment of "me time" away from killing your kid, you have serious issues! If you need that much "me time" to not kill your child, maybe having children wasn't a good idea! The fact that people can even SAY things like this and think it's ok, is just mind boggling! Hey, so next time I hear of a horrible murder or home intrusion, or heck, any crime, I'll just remember, gee, that guy must have just needed some "me time" and didn't get it. All those guys in prison right now? They just needed a little "me time!" That's the answer!
We don't need police to prevent crime, we all just need some "me time"!

Look, I have been clinically depressed. I have even been suicidal. But no matter how sick in the head I got, I always had a choice. I had a choice to keep living. I had a choice to call a friend. I had a choice to cart myself off to the emergency room. There are ALWAYS choices. 911 always answers the phone. You can't tell me there were no services.

You have to make a clear and conscious choice to drive someone out to a remote location and poison them slowly. That doesn't happen in two seconds. There were so many chances to make the right choice and she chose not to.

So I might be a mom, and I might have an Autistic child and I might even share the same first name, but I am NOT like her. I'm tired of people aligning with her in some sort of sick solidarity. I'm tired of all the excuses.