Another autistic child killed by a parent. "Not surpris

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why is it always assumed severely or profoundly autistic people will go into rotten institutional care let alone jail and having no one advocating for him?
most regulars on wp know already but am severely autistic & intelectualy disabled and have lived in institutional care the past decade,am on two to one support plus both a waking night and sleep in staff for self, am advocated for by staff here and the trafford learning [US=intelectual] disability multi disciplinary team.
am also not allowed to be arrested and/or put into police custody of any type due to being intelectualy disabled which is covered under the mental capacity act,am only legaly allowed to be locked up for extreme challenging behavior in intelectual disability acute hospitals which was one place had spent four months in last year.

am fed up that severely or profoundly autistic people are being killed because the parents cant cope or see it as a mercy killing because they dont understand what we think of our life-we see our life and autism very differently to them.

am not 'blaming' the parents-but what this shows is theres a massive gap in support of the autistic child/adult as well as carer respite & peer support and a lot of ignorance of the severe and profound autism spectrums,this especialy goes for america.
we are treated like profound burdens nearly straight from birth, we grow up resented by our families,many of us grow up regulary over hearing from our parents talking together or with profesionals they wished we had never been born,mum is still severely depressed and an alcoholic that started out as self medicating because she had been unable to cope with self as a toddler.

we need to stop blaming autists,parents,whoever and fight for more funding to be given to those who need it,there needs to be more carer support and better information on the severe and profound spectrums of autism; much of ASD awareness is now only focusing on HFA,have not seen a so called 'ASD' uk documentary that featured LFA for years,people still think we are all still the same and if we are different to their view of it we arent LFA.

There is always more to the story than what articles say. My cousin who has worked as a journalist told me the reason why they don't put in all the details is due to limited characters they have. They can only use so much space. That is why my mom tells me not everything you read in the media is true because there is always more to the story. Plus facts get twisted. I can use the hot coffee incident as an example. All those years we didn't know the whole story because the media twisted it into the woman was driving and she sued for money and that wasn't true. In fact it was her grand son that was driving and the woman had second degree burns she had to to go the hospital and she got a tn thousand dollar medical bill and she wrote to the McDonalds cooperation asking them to pay her medical bill and to lower the coffee temperature and they had other reports about other people burning themselves with their coffee since 1983. She didn't want any money from them, all she wanted was them to pay her medical bill and lower the coffee temperature but her family made her take it to court when they wouldn't do it and it turned into this mess. She didn't get all that money from them like the media claimed. Or that one mother who sent her boy she adopted back to Russia. That story was also twisted. It made it sound like the mom was lazy so she sent him back leaving out the fact the boy had RAD and he had threatened to burn their home down and how the parents had to keep everything locked up that he could use as weapons, spent over $20,000 trying to get him help over the years so it's not like the mother decided to send him back like he was some animal because he didn't fit into her mold of her ideal child. The media also made it sound like she was a single parent.

I also think when a parent kills their disabled child, they are thinking their kid is better off dead than being in a home where they are getting abused or neglected. To me that is not done with malicious intent, it's done with feeling hopeless and no way out. Then they go killing themselves because they are better off dead than being locked behind bars. We all know what happens to child killers. I know prisons usually keep them separated from other inmates but that doesn't seem to be the case always or I wouldn't be hearing about it. Inmates somehow find their way to them to hurt them it seems like unless the prison they are at doesn't separate them.

Unfortunately the mindset in America has been for as long as I have been around that anyone who has a mental disability or disorder is a burden to society. Private insurance barely covers anything if they even give coverage. The government programs aren't much better and while the shift from the horrible institutions of the past were completed, this is where they stopped. Now they drug them up and many are on the streets if they have no family or family willing to help them. Many of the homeless in this country desperately need medical care and do not receive it. People don't want to pay taxes for it and seem to want the problem to just disappear. Sad for what many considered the "supposed" greatest nation for a good portion of the 20th century. With the recent changes in healthcare I fear it will only get worse. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of places worse in this world for those needing this kind of medical care. But most I think would agree we are at the bottom of the list of the western industrialized economies when it comes to medical care of any kind, let alone mental health care. I hope it changes in my lifetime but won't be surprised if it doesn't.

Thank you. That was my point, perhaps poorly worded in the OP, that it is counter-productive when an autistic child is murdered to paint the child in such negative terms, for instance by using the word "violent" as a single, emotionally loaded descriptor for autistic meltdowns.

One of the videos indicated that the family was speaking out in a helpful and collected manner about Robbie and his mother. Surely they could have provided a few tiny details about Robbie and his life to convey some of his humanity, to allow the article to paint him as more than a problematic, violent hulk.

We don't have to vilify murdered children in order to shine a light on the need for better services for autistic children and their families.

I was in both group homes and residential treatment facilities. The staff there often are hired with no previous experience. They are required to attend a few hours of "training" and then they get the job. Most of these places are owned privately. So, medicaid will pay to house children with severe emotional/developmental problems there. While I can't speak for all places, I was abused in every single mental health facility that I've been to, including hospitals. I was undiagnosed, of course, but still. They labeled me as borderline and traumatized me in ways that made me unable to trust people in a position of authority ever again.

I've told countless people I was abused by my mother, by the way. I even had proof. No one person listened. Not even the police or child protective services who had a case open with our family but refused to listen to me at all.

I agree with Inkblott. I will also say that if I was desperate enough, in another world, I could see myself killing someone to spare them pain. If this person lived in an area where autistic people get locked up forever and abused, I just....feel sad. I empathize in a lot of different ways. No, this child did not *deserve* to be murdered, but I could see how someone who has lost all hope would think it would be sparing them. Also, I hate how people keep saying how "violent" autistic people are. They almost imply they are doing it on purpose. Like, "Sure, I know my son/daughter doesn't MEAN to do this, but they 'push me around'". No, they don't "push you around". That implies they are doing it on purpose. But I can't deny these parents are at their wit's end and need SERVICES.

I was a caregiver of elderly people. I did live-in work (where I lived with the person and did not come home at all). I did this for sometimes days or weeks at a time. I was suicidal ALL OF THE TIME. A caregiver who does not have any breaks can resort to perceived mercy killings. There is a point where if you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of someone else. And as selfish as that makes the parent feel, they need breaks. When there aren't any available, they can become like this. The media makes it worse by acting as if the parent is the angel and the kid some how had it coming. The reality is far more bleak, because this kind of situation could be PREVENTED with proper services.

They do pay, but not enough to take care of all the needs. If you read the story, you'll see that the mom was trying to get her son into an institution, but was turned away; they had no space for him.

In the US, Medicaid (which you get if you're on disability and have spent down assets) is a very tricky thing, because it's administered by the individual states, which have budgets. Unlike the federal govt, they can't vote themselves a higher debt ceiling and just borrow forever. So when the money's gone, it's pretty much gone. At that point they curtail services.

Unless it's money coming directly from the feds, there really aren't unlimited services for anything. The money has to be voted, appropriated. You'll notice too that there's only so much subsidized housing to go around.

(I think perhaps you're missing the part about the horror of living with the memory of killing your child and feeling like there is no longer any reason for you to live, because you loved that child.)

Because that's usually how it goes for disabled people who can't look after or advocate for themselves. And because so many of the people who work in institutions are there because they can't get other jobs. And because institutions are large machines generally unconcerned with the individual.

You have a relatively good setup, from the sounds of it, and I'm glad for you and hope it continues. But the kind of services available to you were not at all available to this boy and his mom, and the sorts of things you describe sound positively romantic in the US. Turnover is high here in social services and disability services; I'm depressed just thinking about some of the situations I've heard of from the funding side. And down here, the arrest of mentally disabled and mentally ill people is a chronic problem. The usual estimates are that most of the people in US prisons have some diagnosable mental illness.

Keep in mind that here, even NTs are warned to bring people with them to the hospital to advocate for them and act as witnesses. Things go wrong and you can't very well advocate for yourself if you're unconscious or stuck in bed.

I already wrote this in the first response I wrote on this thing, but I completely disagree. If I say my son pushes me around, it means he pushes me around... which he can do with the intent to hurt me or not. In the case of a severely autistic child, it's probably not with the intent to hurt me, however, if the outcome is that he does hurt me, then he hurt me. Why would it be that because he's autistic it doesn't "count" if someone else gets injured???????

There are 2 different people here and they both experience different things. He may have been experiencing sensory overload or something, but meanwhile, she was experiencing being pushed around by her son. It is possible for these things to occur simultaneously because there are 2 different people, thus 2 different experiences. Her pain cannot be explained away by how he felt as he caused it.

When I talk, I often put things in quotes. I wasn't quoting you at all. I was quoting certain phrases from my memories.

When people talk about autistic people being "violent" and "pushing them around", they are often saying that as a way to imply they are doing it on purpose. They are implying that it's like an NT teenager who beats up his or her mother. That's what I take issue with.

Someone getting hurt when an autistic person is having a meltdown would be having an "accident". If someone had a seizure and fell on someone and hurt them, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't say anything about how "violent" the person was. However, when an autistic person does it and it's not within their control, they are suddenly accused of being violent. Then, if the autistic child is abused and/or killed, people only pity the parent/guardian who did it because of what they were going through. The spotlight is shifted to how violent the autistic person is, and the autistic person is now the reason that their parents hurt them.

The problem with this is that in an effort to recognize the parent's pain, they end up dehumanizing the autistic person. It doesn't have to be the reverse in order to be good reporting. They could instead use this situation to focus on the need for services to prevent this tragedy from happening. Instead, they focus on the violent acts of the autistic person in such a way that essentially demonizes the autistic person. Also, anyone else who kills their child tends to be demonized in the media no matter what the child did or didn't do. In the case of autistic people, though, the blame is shifted on the person that is murdered.

Just so you know, I don't have little to no empathy for the parents of autistic children. As someone who was a caregiver of elderly people, I often took care of people who had late-stages of dementia. I was kicked, punched, spit on, and physically hurt many times. I understand what you are saying. Look at what Inkblott said. He/she is right: "We don't have to vilify murdered children in order to shine a light on the need for better services for autistic children and their families."

Actually if the person had frequent seizures during which they attacked or harmed the caregiver, then intentional or not, it would be characterized as "violent", because that is in fact violence.



I really did not read this story as dehumanizing or demonizing the son. What I read was the same thing I've seen in many accounts, often by parents who love their children dearly, of autistic children who've grown big and strong enough to do real damage to caregivers in the course of meltdowns or just sudden brief wallopings from nowhere.

But maybe that's because I've watched parents struggle with this and the fear, as their child grows, of serious harm to both themselves and the child once he or she is too big and strong for the parents, especially the mother, to restrain the child. It's perfectly obvious that it isn't the child's fault. It isn't anybody's fault. But it is still a very serious, frightening, damaging problem.

I believe the story actually did exactly what you wanted it to do. It focused on the need for services. I mean if your complaint is that the boy wasn't a fully rounded character, neither was the mother. I have no doubt that she had an identity beyond "mom of autistic son, possibly with dreams and aspirations and humanity beyond 'mom'", but that doesn't show up in the piece, either. But this is low-rent news, not essay.

I said it would be an accident because often, when people categorize autistic meltdowns as "violent", they are implying the intentional kind of violence.

I suppose I should have said that I wasn't just talking about this article. The OP was talking about types of stories like these, but only gave an example of one. I was talking about how the media reports on this situation in general. I thought I said something in my wording that indicated I meant more than this story, but I guess I didn't.

I do not believe in this particular case the mother was abusive. I do empathize with her. I also have thought about what would happen if I had a child who was worse than me. What would I do. I also understand mercy killings. I have seen plenty of media reports and personal story telling that indicate that people want to blame someone for it, and that's the child.

To compare how messed up this is, imagine an adult child killing their parent with severe dementia. The outrage would be completely different. And while I understand that could also be a mercy killing, the media would report this completely differently. There are dedicated state employees that protect adults with dementia until they die. To compare, people seem more unconcerned with the supposed burden of an autistic child.

I'm not sure why all of these parents are getting almost a "pass", though. It's still not OK to murder your autistic son. I don't feel comfortable with the excuses being made, even though I empathize. Then I'm told I can't possibly understand unless I'm an NT parent taking care of an autistic child.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillin ... -to-blame/

This pretty much sums up what my feelings are, but at the same time, yes, I do have empathy for the parents. As I've stated, I've been a caregiver.

There is a comment there that I wanted to repost here:



"Aren’t you cute, Andrew Kilroy? Do you believe you have autism? Do you believe you know what autism is?

You probably don’t have the slightest clue, as shown by your first question. You seem to believe that autistics are whole human beings who just have troubles expressing their feelings. That an autistic individual wouldn’t need to resort to violence unless he felt threatened. Hah! Just shows how little you know.

I have an autistic brother, who’s 26 years old and 6 feet tall. He’s violent, unpredictable, and most of the time… cannot be reasoned with. He has inflicted several injuries, going as far as breaking bones, on my parents when I’m at work and can’t protect them. He does not communicate very well and lashes out violently if contraried in the slightest ways, such as seeing his favorite soccer team miss a goal opportunity, a weather forecast he doesn’t approve of, when a movie he wanted to see gets delayed, or receiving the news that his favorite news anchor is going to retire. And don’t even get me started on what happens when one of his toys break.

You see, not all autistics are made equal. I’m sure there are plenty of them who are as sweet as puppies, marvelous little creatures full of joy and love – but there are just as many who are the complete opposite. You sound just like someone who claims racism doesn’t exist anymore because you’ve never seen an act of prejudice with your own eyes, but that doesn’t make it the truth!

And for the love of all that is holy, don’t call yourself autistic. It’s really insulting to the families of real autistics whenever a pretentious hipster kid with Aspegers claims to have a mental illness."


Upon researching autism before I was diagnosed, I've seen this exact attitude time and TIME again by caretakers of lower functioning autistic people. I'm sure you aren't like the person who wrote that comment (at least I HOPE not), but this is considered an OK attitude to have with most of the adults I've interacted with. These are the kind of people I see supporting the murder of these children. Those are the people I'm talking about.

Perhaps my family lucked out.

I know Emily, and have found her treatment of people who disagree with her to be consistently brutal. The idea that people may have experiences leading to views -- reasonable views -- that differ from hers does not seem to me to be one she's all that sympathetic to.

This sounds like a particularly horrible, ghastly murder. And the woman sounded quite desperate and nuts, though having been a caregiver to someone considerably less disabled, I'm sympathetic to the notion that unrelieved caregiving can in fact make you crazy. Consider what it'd take for someone who'd held things together the way she had for so long to conclude that this was the thing to do. And to try to kill herself, even though she still had a daughter; no doubt she felt she couldn't be a mother after that, that the girl would be better off just alone with the father. But by that time she'd lost her marriage and, I think? her business, and given up living with her daughter, she'd lived carrying nearly a half-million dollars in autism-related debt, she was diapering her 200-lb son, living in a medical maze. The business with the cat seems altogether bizarre, but perhaps by then she was just thinking: no more suffering, no more suffering.

Family caregivers are often invisible people whose lives are ruled by tremendous emotional hardship, anxiety, physical exhaustion, money problems, and sleeplessness. Having had the experience of caregiving for a few years in early midlife, I have no interest in marrying again. I don't want to be nurse to another man, I don't want to forget how to smile again, spend my days in a Lewis-Carroll landscape of bizarre and unexpectable problems while wondering if we'll be homeless soon because of the expense, and I don't want to be held responsible by society for his wellbeing. I have seen the parents of moderately-to-severely autistic children simply dismantled, emotionally, physically, financially over the years they spend caring for their children without adequate support. I've seen one end up as a psych emergency herself.

There is something particularly sexist, too -- not Emily's usual problem -- in how these stories are received by those outraged at sympathy. Mothers, in this conception, it seems, are not people; they are endless fonts of caregiving and love. Mothers are expected to give endlessly, while smiling, because this is what they're supposed to love. Mothers are not supposed to snap under the weight of thousands of days' worth of unrelieved difficult and at times frightening caregiving work. Perhaps that's why there's so much sympathy for the murderers in these cases -- there is a very large and silent sorority of people -- mostly women, but some men too -- who have done caregiving work and know what it can do.

When Emily has done that work, with no local respect for her PhD, for fourteen years, in continuous poverty, I believe she'll be in a better position to judge.

Again, the real question in this part of the conversation seems to me how the autism communities are going to accept the fact that there is such a thing as "can't". There comes a time when some people simply and literally cannot go on caring for autistic family members and every alternative is bad, and if you expect them to be sane when they reach that point, then congratulations, you've never known despair. I think the news article had it right -- there has to be more support.

But there is another problem here, too. If you read the story about the family, they turned down help over and over. These were people who felt it shameful to accept government help. And this is going to happen. A lot, particularly in the US, because in fact there is shame, stigma, attached to taking help. For those who blame a family for not reaching out for help...well, have a look at the situation of abused women, and ask why they don't ask for help. Asking for help is a complex thing, and there are real reasons why people don't do it.

All these things are complex, and sad. But I'm not inclined to follow Emily's example and rail at the mother and those who are sympathetic to her, or to the boy, or to the father. It seems to me they all deserve sympathy.