Rest in Peace, Tamiyah

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With skyrocketing health cost and the fact that most autistic people unable to be productive (At lease by the worlds standards, that is). It's no surprise that you will see more sad stories like this. I don't mean to sound evil about this but I think the government is trying to save money this way. If they put the cousin in prison. that 60K a year in tax money. Sadly though. LFA people are being treated less and less human.

On the upside, having just read through the memorial, people are getting longer sentences now, and getting off just because the victim is autistic a lot less. The difference between now at 10 years ago is quite noticeable.

So maybe there has been some progress, if we're at least willing to at least jail the murderers.

I agree that it's pretty bad, but I don't think it's getting worse. I think we're getting more outraged at people treating children and vulnerable adults like trash; plus, with the Internet, it's harder to hush up things like this. Tamiyah's story got published in one local paper--from there, it got repeated on Facebook, and then other people picked it up.

That the government trying to save money... Well, not directly; they're not diabolical, just bureaucratic. What happens is that the people whose job it is to care for disabled people are often underpaid, poorly trained, poorly educated. They value the job less. People who don't care about other human beings can get into the job without a proper background check, and then work with little supervision. There aren't too many places to go if you are non-verbal or severely disabled and you are being mistreated.

We need to insist that people of all kinds with all disabilities should be valued as much as any other human being. With (apparently severe) tuberous sclerosis, Tamiyah's lifespan would have been shorter than average, but she didn't have to die at twelve. She could have had family, friends, happiness. She could have done so many things she won't get to do now.

At the church I used to go to, we had one member who had severe CP and ID, who would lie in his tilted back power chair and make these little yelps of joy during the singing. I guess he was about twenty years old or so. He lived with his mom, and he usually seemed to be either content or outright happy. I think he loved being in church. We all liked having him there. That could've been Tamiyah.

It's so sad when this type of thing happens. Words fail me, they really do.

What a heartbreaking story. That poor little girl