Driver using van in Toronto kills 10 injures 15

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Autism Canada on Tuesday denounced what it called “egregious claims” by a defense lawyer that the man who admitted using a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto didn’t know what he was doing was wrong because he has autism spectrum disorder.

“Autism Canada wishes to respond emphatically that these claims are wholly unsubstantiated, merely speculative, and made carelessly without any published evidence proving autism, on its own, is a risk factor for becoming violent against other people,” the organization wrote.

It noted, as has the defense, that people with autism are far more likely to be victims of violence and bullying than perpetrators.

“There is no psychosis in ASD and no tendency to anti-social behavior any more than in the general population. I think you would not get any serious objection from the academic community on that account,” said Dr. Peter Szatmari, head of the Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative.

The judge has said the case will turn on Minassian’s state of mind at the time.

OK I give up. Is this a serious comment or is it some kind of sarcasm?
Elaboration for the literal-minded please, Fnord?

Except that people weren't detonating bombs in crowds of people or driving wagons into crowds either.

I believe similar things happened in Chicago during the 1920s and 30s.

When the criminal trial of the man who drove the van began earlier this month, many hoped it would finally provide some closure for the attack, which shocked a country where mass killings remain relatively rare. At least some hoped to gain an understanding of why Alek Minassian, who had just graduated from college, decided to kill so many strangers along the city’s main street before attempting “suicide by cop,” by pretending he was armed and yelling at a police officer to shoot him.

The trial has dominated the news, as each day in court offers a fuller picture of the defendant’s life and mental state.

There are few physical reminders of the attack, besides two temporary plaques memorializing the victims along the 1.5 mile deadly route.

The trial opened with new graphic details that were accepted as fact by the defendant, who faces 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 of attempted murder.

n an interview with a police detective, recorded hours after his arrest and shown in court, the defendant said he had hated women ever since he’d “attempted to socialized with some girls” at a Halloween party five years earlier, and “they laughed at me and held the arms of the ugly guys instead.”

Afterward, he said, he had became radicalized on online incel chat groups. He had made a plan a month before the Toronto attack, thinking “I would inspire future masses to join me in my uprising as well.”

At no point during the four-hour interview did he display emotion. He spoke plainly about using the 10-foot-van “as a weapon” and hitting people who “are no longer alive as a result.” Near the end he said, “I feel like I accomplished my mission.”

At the heart of the trial is autism spectrum disorder, which Mr. Minassian was diagnosed with at age 5. At a court hearing, his father, Vahe, described how he could be hyper-focused on things like math that interested him, but found social interactions, particularly with women, difficult.

He called his son “gentle” and “happy” with no history of violence.

Not criminally responsible findings are uncommon in Canada; the vast majority relate to episodes of psychotic spectrum disorder or mood disorders. Experts in mental disorder law are watching the trial closely and consider the defense “unusual if not unprecedented,” said Anita Szigeti, a criminal lawyer in Toronto.

“Autism is not normally linked to the inability to know right from wrong,” she said. “Everyone thinks it’s an uphill battle.”

On Monday, the judge gave the Crown and its experts a few days to review a number of interviews a psychiatrist hired by the defence did with Minassian.

Another psychiatrist has testified that Minassian’s autism spectrum disorder left him fixated on mass killings and vulnerable to the ramblings of an American mass murderer.

Court has heard that Minassian told various doctors his motivation for the attacks ranged from notoriety to revenge against society for years of rejection by women to anxiety over starting a new job.

Toronto van attack killer Alek Minassian displayed symptoms of autism but no signs of psychosis, which is at odds with almost all cases of people found to be not criminally responsible for their violence, Canada’s most prominent forensic psychiatrist told court.

Dr. John Bradford, testifying at the mass murder trial Thursday morning, said that because of this, Minassian does not fit the conventional notion of someone who is not criminally responsible.

He said there could be a “hypothetical possibility” of finding a path to a not criminally responsible verdict based on symptoms of autism, but not one he supports.

He estimated that 80 to 90 per cent of people who are found not criminally responsible have some kind of psychotic condition, a mental break that deprives them of an operating mind.

Bradford has, over more than 40 years, examined many of Canada’s most notorious killers, such as Paul Bernardo, Robert Pickton, Russell Williams and Luka Magnotta. An important part of his expertise is assessing whether an accused person is fit to stand trial, or if they are not criminally responsible for criminal acts they are charged with.

Bradford is a professor at McMaster University and head of a psychiatry team at St Joseph’s Healthcare, both in Hamilton. Minassian spent 60 days at St. Joseph’s secure psychiatric facility for a court-ordered assessment of his mental fitness. He arrived shortly after he tried to kill himself by drinking liquid soap, so he was kept in an isolation suite and monitored intensely, Bradford said.

Minassian started focusing on the subject of mass murder around 2008 or 2009, and routinely researched it on the internet. His fascination in mass murderers “gained momentum” in 2016 and stayed with him leading up to his van attack on April 23, 2018, Bradford said.

Bradford said autism, generally, is not linked to violence.

However, in the rare subset of mass murderers, he said there appears to be an over-representation of people with autism spectrum disorder.

He differentiated between the lack of empathy towards other people’s emotional state associated with autism from the lack of empathy shown by psychopaths: psychopaths take advantage of the emotions of others through manipulation while someone with autism struggles to even recognize others’ emotions.

He does not think autism alone could cause the level of mental disorder that could trigger a finding of not criminally responsible, as it is outlined in Section 16 of Canada’s criminal code.

Minassian has never had hallucination or delusions, court heard. Bradford said the closest he could think of in this case is that hyper-focus as a symptom of autism could relate to Minassian’s obsession with mass murderers and incels — the ideology of “involuntary celibates” that Minassian claimed as part of his motivation — and may be similar to the concept of an over-valued idea, in which someone maintains a false or exaggerated belief, but with much less intensity than a delusion.

On the whole, however, Bradford said he found nothing was depriving Minassian of having an operating mind before, during or after the deadly van attack.

Most "involuntary celibates" are not violent either.

Same goes for Islamists, ANTIFA and the alt-right, but nonetheless all of them produce radicals who act violently.

Same goes for Islamists, ANTIFA and the alt-right, but nonetheless all of them produce radicals who act violently.

The difference between those and the "incels" are that "incel" people are more of a frustration group than a political ideology. That said, only a few have actually committed violence while the rest are simply plain frustration.

A psychiatrist says the man who killed 10 people in Toronto’s van attack has never shown aggression towards others, just himself.

Dr. Alexander Westphal is testifying in the defence of Alek Minassian, who has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder.

Westphal is expected to testify that Minassian is not criminally responsible for his actions on April 23, 2018, due to autism spectrum disorder.

He says Minassian’s only known aggression in life was when as a young child he would thrash his head against the wall.

Westphal, a U.S. psychiatrist with a specialization in autism, said Minassian struggled socially and was terrified of women and girls.

He was so uncomfortable around women that he could not give his order at a restaurant if the wait staff was female, Westphal said.

Minassian has never had a relationship with a woman, Westphal testified.

“The closest he got to any romantic relationship was a girl who he got her phone number from and when he texted her, she didn’t text him back,” Westphal said

“Being picked on because of his disability is something that occurred throughout his childhood,” Westphal said.

“It’s one of the things he’s identified in as much he’s identified a causal reason for his actions.”

One of the earliest signs that Minassian had autism came in the form of his lack of eye contact.

He’d eventually learn to make eye contact after being taught.

“His eye contact is poorly modulated,” Westphal said.

He also did not smile much, Westphal said.

Toronto van attack driver Alek Minassian has zero emotional response to the carnage he brought to his victims and their families — neither virtuous feelings of regret nor iniquitous feelings of pleasure, court heard during key testimony at the mass murder trial.

Dr. Alexander Westphal, a U.S.-based psychiatrist specializing in autism, who spent 14 hours interviewing and testing Minassian in preparation for trial, said he believes this utter lack of emotion created a break with reality that could lead the court to find Minassian not criminally responsible for the deadly attack.

“There is no question he has a very highly developed concept of the rule-nature of the wrongfulness of this. The problem is his comprehension of the real, horrific impact that something like this would have on other people,” Westphal testified Tuesday.

“Which I really, honestly, like, whatever I say in this evidence, I don’t think he understands that,” he said, with emotion apparent in his voice.

Although 28 years old and considered a high-function autistic person, Minassian still has a child-like conception of morality, he said.

“He is stuck at an early developmental stage of the development of moral judgment. He understands the rules, he can articulate the rules, he has a very sophisticated understanding of the rules.”

However, he cannot apply them to real life."

Westphal said for Minassian, killing and death were utterly abstract things.

“I hate to bring this up,” he said, “but it really has the dissociative quality of someone who is playing a video game. That really is the flavour of how he completely and dispassionately talked about all of this. It is as abstract as killing people in a video game, which is a horrific thing for me.

“He still doesn’t have any emotional connection with what he did,” Westphal said.

“He doesn’t have any emotional connection — he doesn’t experience remorse, he doesn’t experience regret, but he also doesn’t experience sadism. It doesn’t feel to him like he is great now, it is just nothing.”