Keep a watch on teens!

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Right now I am having major anxiety attacks. My niece who has become my own child due to my sister's physical incapacity is in serious trouble. She's 14 and has a crush on another student in her school. Evidently, she must have had some physical contact with a same-age boy, got dumped, and now was sending him anonymous I love You letters on a spillit account.
This boy complained to the school counselor that she is stalking him and tomorrow, the police want to talk about "the nature of their relationship". I can't believe this is happening. Why would police be involved with 14 year olds? I saw what she put in this kid's spillit. Nothing was harmful at all. To me it just looked like the writings of a rejected and dejected teen. Has anyone experienced this? My niece is on the spectrum.

I'm not so sure the police shouldn't know she is on the spectrum. If the boy had physical contact just for fun and without much caring while she thought he cared, could be normal teenage stuff or could be she is the victim and maybe he shouldn't have played with her like she was a toy, then expected her to quietly go away when she thought he cared because he lied. Just saying, not so sure who the victim, if any, is. If she has ASD and he does not, she is developmentally younger and vulnerable. Change the lens from he said the word stalking to she seems heartbroken and he doesn't know why and that's the equation I see as likely. I'm so sorry this is happening to her, and to you.

I've seen similar stuff before. A girl was friendly with a boy on the spectrum. The boy became obsessed and started texting her constantly. The girl asked him to stop but he didn't listen. She was well meaning, but didn't know what to do, so she asked her teachers. So the school got involved and they suspended him. The sad thing is without the diagnosis, this probably would have just been resolved between the two kids. When the diagnosis comes into play, things can get bumped up, for well-meaning reasons. And sometimes that leads to things getting blown out of proportion.

I think the key is first education. Your niece needs to learn about the big mushy grey line between flirting and showing interest and obsession. She needs to learn that even if she feels very excited about a boy, she has to hold back a little at first, and then figure out how he feels, and act based on that. These are all very complicated social skills, but she has to learn, or this sort of thing will happen again. If the police know her diagnosis, and believe that you are taking appropriate steps to deal with the situation, they will probably drop the investigation. But this is an important warning that you (or a professional) need to teach her about dating and sex before something similar to this or worse happens again.

You know your niece. Talk to her, listen to her, and forget the assumptions people are making. I don't understand why the word stalking is being used. In emilemulders description, though, a girl was friendly, nothing more, and it was misunderstood by a boy. Here there was some kind of physical, presumably romantic, contact. Assuming your niece is very high functioning and the boy is typical, helping your niece back off makes sense. If she is not very high functioning, though, she may be a very easy victim who has trouble seeing when she is being used. Which could happen to anyone and isn't restricted to children or adults with ASD. Just maybe harder to recognize it has happened or figure out what to do about it for someone with ASD. That's where you come in, helping her cope.

Call a lawyer.

DO NOT bring the diagnosis into it. They are not going to be understanding, or patient, or tolerant; they are NOT going to see an atypical child processing her first heartbreak in her own way. They are going to see a PSYCHO, who needs to be locked up and/or heavily medicated before they have to clean up a murder scene. Either way, you end up with a zombie and/or a suicidal niece.

DO NOT permit the young lady to have ANY further relationships, or ANY unsupervised contact with ANYONE. EVER.

Thank you all for your input. Luckily we had a police officer who truly understood the situation.
She was professional but just did her job. My niece was told to avoid this boy altogether and not even consider just being friends. In return, she promised me that she'd insure that the boy do the same out of fairness and not to antagonize or confuse my niece. When I looked into her eyes after all was said and done, my heart felt like lead. I told her how much I loved her and she smiled. It hurt to see her treated like a criminal when she was used in such a cruel way. All threats of litigation were dropped, no charges files. It went well. This is going to be a long, hard ride. My niece will remain with me throughout her life because my sister's prognosis is a very bad one due to the final stages of breast cancer.

Glad it worked out. Teens on the spectrum have a difficult time with boundaries. My son and daughter gave their younger sister (HFA) very specific instructions about texting / PMing: you send one message; if you don't get an answer you can send another one an hour or two later (not before); if you still don't get an answer you don't send them any messages until they respond. They explained that people might not reply for a lot of reasons including the fact that they were jerks. This seemed to really help. It had been a major problem resulting in a suspension (before the dx, so I think sharing the info would have helped) and we had tried to address it more generally, but the specific instructions were more helpful.
J.

I am so glad it worked out, and you were able to get the right read on the officer handling the case.

As for the thread as a whole: I am surprised by some of the comments, and I guess they come from experience, but here is what I suggest as the first piece of advice to anyone with a situation like this:

Do NOT go into it without someone present who will be able to read the police officer and decide on the proper approach.

As much as some of you fear that divulging the ASD can backfire, so can failure to divulge. It is going to depend on the officer. There is no one-size-fits-all answer that anyone can or should default to. The situation HAS to be read IN PERSON. I know how hard that is for someone on the spectrum, SO BRING IN SOMEONE YOU TRUST, that you know has your back, who can do it for you. There is a reason I handle such things in our family and not my husband. I don't always read people right day-to-day, but I've got a really, really good track record on the most difficult types of situations,.

Yes, totally can backfire to withhold the information and can turn things around to give an explanation for something that looks off. I'm not sure I'd say anything otherwise, but if law enforcement personnel see something that makes them nervous, looks strange, they need an explanation fast before things escalate. And anyone who uses the information to assume harmful intent probably was going to anyway.

I agree with DW_a_Mom that having someone there who can read the situation properly is important. Many of us don't have someone readily available who has good people judgement, and the current environment (Adam Lanza driven, to a point) has people spooked. Also depending on where you live, you may feel it more likely a police officer would not understand. I think those are reasons that contribute to the thought that it is better not to disclose.

I live out in the hinterlands in a not very enlightened place, and I think the odds of a policeman responding negatively to the information vs. positively is very high. So I would have to consider very carefully if that would be worse than what assumptions he would come up on his own (drugs, some other condition) and honestly I would not know what to think.

So, I would probably have to get a lawyer if I were in that kind of position.

Edited to add: I am glad things worked out for the OP. I meant to post that earlier and got wrapped up.

I'm glad it worked out, too. But this and other boys could easily torment and confuse the OPs niece, she could be a major victim---just look at the appalling statistics on victimization of females with ASD.

I know though that the situation might be different for boys. And I might think quite differently if I had boys about any interactions with law enforcement!

I think OPs niece doesn't need to learn to stay away just because of the legal stuff, because she'd get in trouble with police. She needs to learn to protect herself by not going looking for love or explanations to someone who said nice things once that they clearly don't mean now. If they ever did! She needs to learn to recognize when to stay away because she is a person, not a toy.

I do understand, though, that what I'm seeing and responding to about this post is different than most. I don't know how relevant to OPs situation. I hope with all of our perspectives we have given some help with ideas, and support.

The book Quirky, Yes, Hopeless, No has some sections on dating and peer interactions that might be helpful for your niece.