Mother Strangles Austistic Son

Post Reply New Topic

You are so contradicting yourself. His problem was inherited - he had autism!

The mother was found to have psychiatric problems, and could have been on the spectrum herself, as her other children apparently are. If a parent is of sound mind then there might be something to what you say, but she clearly wasn't.

Not only that, but it is parents - plural, responsible for the children and there is nothing to say the father wasn't of sound mind (although he was abusive and nasty) so where is the attitude about him? Why did he not look after the boy, instead of driving the mother out and doing nothing about her having to live in hotels with him, and then after the fact saying "how tragic"! You are heaping blame on the mother who was in a vulnerable position due to her mental health. If she was found to have diminished responsibility, then clearly this means she wasn't responsible!

I agree with neilson_wheels, you do belong in the stone age...isn't that somewhere around the neanderthals...

I understand that very well, but the killing happened long after her abusive husband left. If that was not the case, I'd make a different judgement.

I'm not. Being uncontrollable is not inherited, and it is not even an autistic trait. It is typically developed when a child that cannot handle authority is brought up with authoritarian methods. I should know since my children are like that (dislike authority, but not uncontrollable), and I also have had experience with uncontrollable children (which had ADHD). What they need is respect and non-authoritarian ways of telling them what is right and wrong. Even though they had ADHD, they didn't even need to be medicated in order to accept such methods. It's all about knowing how to deal with them, and has nothing to do with anything inherited (other than dislike for authority).

And I think that this follows naturally from the Neanderthal theory. We cannot assume that Neanderthal were regularly depressed, were uncontrollable as children and drove their parents to the point of killing them. That's not something with an evolutionary value. In order to create optimal conditions for neurodiverse children we need to understand reasons things go wrong, and educate people about how it is avoided (unless they know it naturally).



That's the worse possible background for parents, as have been shown in different primate species, especially orangutan, which I think is a very good model species of neurodiversity. So that background might explain the outcome, but I have a hard time accepting that we should leave it that.



Do you mean that we should accept that autistic children are maltreated and eventually killed?

Exactly. She left him, not the other way round. It probably took every ounce of strength she had left in her, after taking regular beatings for years, and what mother in her right mind would leave their autistic child alone in a house with a father like that. She was doing what she felt was her only option in leaving, perhaps the father made it clear he would not look after the boy or the mother knew him well enough not to trust him to do it right (perhaps he was neglectful as well as abusive), or feared he would also be beaten. The very fact that she wouldn't press charges shows she was already a broken woman, living in fear of him or gullible enough to believe his promises of never doing it again.

It would seem no services stepped in to help her either. I mean the family doctor knew of the home conditions and police had been called enough times about him beating her so why was this poor woman left in this situation. Can you imagine how desperate she must have been? Living in hotels with an autistic child? She must have been pushed to the very end of her rope and felt there was no other option. She also tried to kill herself, she must have thought there was no way out for either of them. Now, because she botched her own suicide, she will be living a hell for the rest of her life with what she did, survivor's guilt and being pushed into a system that wouldn't help her when her son was alive and now will happily fill her to the brim with drugs and stuff her into mental homes. She also has to live with the guilt of her surviving adult children judging her and knowing what she did. I feel for the woman. To get into that state of mind that you really can see no other way, must have been beyond hell on earth for her.

So if people miss out on the education and fail in their lives they should then be executed?

OK, then I change my mind. We should press charges against people that knew this was happening and didn't do anything to prevent it.

Somebody needs to be held responsible for it, and right now I feel that people that knew about all this should be prosecuted because they contributed to the death of a child.

Clearly not, that's just a ridiculous question. As someone on the spectrum myself with 2 children on the spectrum how could I think that!

What I am saying is, that you are being unfairly judgemental and B&W. You may have had experience of out of control children - but as I have already said that is not what this is about, no-one said he was an uncontrollable child. It sounds as if you are patting yourself on the back for what you see as being Mr Perfect and getting it all right and judging anyone that doesn't.

Walk a mile in another man's shoes before you judge him. Her situation was totally different to yours. You have no way of knowing what she went through or her motivation.

And you are pointing out that her mental state made her a wrong parent for her child, that's not her fault! And like I said, clearly no services stepped in to help when she needed it.

I just happen to think that it is time to look at how parents and other caregivers contributes to bad outcomes in neurodiverse children. We have gone too far with "this is inherited so we can do nothing about it". We just need to face it. Many things in the ASD-diagnosis are not inherited, but caused by a bad environment. It won't get us back to the "refrigerator mother" state if it is done right, and it can in fact be a good argument against much of the ABA-methods forced on young children.

Isn't that just part of the general protection of children--especially special needs children--against parental abuse? For example, my sociopathic stepfather used to yell at me precisely because he knew that I had hyperacusis and being yelled at would put me in a panic state and cause me pain. Yelling at a typical child might be a bit rude, but it's not abusive in most cases. For an autistic child, it's abuse. This sort of protection against abuse should be extended to neurodiverse kids even more so because they're so vulnerable. But it's the same thing we're already trying to do; it doesn't need new definitions.

Why on earth would they feel sorry for this woman? She murdered her own son. She might not be sane, but she knew what she was doing at the time; she was not suffering a psychotic break, she deserves to go to prison. From the sound of the testimonies, no one in the family was particularly devastated by their family member's death; they all sound like strangers going around saying, "This is such a tragedy", as if it wasn't them that it was affecting. I don't understand the justice system in this country.

Should anyone feel sorry for her? Does anyone in this situation deserve sympathy?

She had four children, all with extra requirements, Dyspraxia, ADHD, Aspergers and LFA. She was also caring for her mother who suffered dementia. Years of mental and physical abuse from her husband, who also failed to take any responsibility for his family or their house either. Suffering from a personality disorder, when she finally found herself homeless with her son, who needed 24 hour care, she snapped. Multiple agencies knew of her situation but did not offer any help. As you have said, it's not like anyone else seemed to care.

Was this the correct choice to make? No.

Big surprise? Not really.

Solution:



That's really going to help. She has been pretty well broken, let's see if we can break her a bit more shall we?

It seems like the father has been absolved of any responsibility by the judge in his summing up.



So this part I can agree with.