Autism advocate cyberbullied

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A Belton father who is an autism advocate says for the last few months, he has been living in fear.
Marty Mendoza claims he and his son have received death threats over the internet and he is hoping the person responsible can be stopped.

Mendoza is a single dad who lives in Belton with his son Marty Jr. Marty Jr. suffers from severe autism and is non-verbal. The two have nearly half-a-million followers on social media and are well known in Central Texas.

Mendoza said a few months ago, he started getting threats from a man online asking where he was from and threatening to kill him and his son. Mendoza said he is an autism advocate and spends nearly all of his time with his son trying to raise awareness about the condition.

They said they were going to come kill me and my son. Just being a single parent and a single dad with an autistic son, we just try to live our lives and try to spread the word of autism,” said Mendoza. “All of our formats and platforms is nothing racial, nothing political. It is about the day in the life of my son. To actually get threats and things like that, it hurts me, because we don’t know if it is real or not."
Mendoza said whoever is doing this, he wants them to know this is not funny and it is scary.
“I've been fighting this fight for 30 years, and this little hate they are doing, it is not going to stop me from doing what I’m doing," he said.

6 News reached out to Belton Police about the incident. They said to be cautious when using social media. Social networking brings people with similar interests and life experiences together, but it can also bring unintended consequences, they said.
They said making threats on social media could lead to misdemeanor or even felony charges, depending on the facts.

Belton Police safety tips for social media:
Use privacy settings.
Do not share personal details (address or phone number)
Limit your online circle
Block trolls or unfriendly followers
Do not meet strangers (or meet in a public place)

Use privacy settings.
Do not share personal details (address or phone number)
Limit your online circle
Block trolls or unfriendly followers
Do not meet strangers (or meet in a public place)


This bears repeating for us on WP. ^


What is a "Neurodiversity Extremist"? Now I've heard everything. Unbelievable.

What kind of a sad pathetic person sends death-threats on the internet. I just really have to wonder what goes on in someone's head to make them think...'you know I should threaten to kill people on the internet'.

Also, so are the police going to try and actually investigate this and maybe try and track the person down? or just tell people 'be careful on the internet' durrr.

I saw a lot of this online back in 2011-2013 with the anti-DSM movement among Aspies.

A lot of resentment against being classified as "autistic" and blaming parents of severely autistic kids for scrapping Aspergers (as if they would care).

I used to get angry at aspie supremacists but now I prefer to help them as I think its just insecurity about how to handle their own problems that makes them drawn to being nuerodiversity extremists

What I find strange about it is how they can claim that it is difficult to track someone on the internet, but, as two young teenagers from the UK found out when they learned how to enter the service programming side of websites in school, and they decided to try it out on the White House.... The FBI came down straight away and arrested them and their Mum told me (I used to meet her on the train) that UK laws to protect children just didn't apply. (And their hacking attempt did not get far so they did not see anything, but the FBI insisted that because they hacked (Which was said to have been very easy to do) they could have seen things and therefore they were being charged as if they had seen things?

So how come they can come down fast on people from distant lands to defend their own interests when they want to, and yet ignore senarios like the cyber bullying mentioned above when they are supposed to be employed to work for the state which are representing its people?

Different places have different freedom of speech laws, in Europe they have stricter rules, in the US its generally relaxed I believe. The difference between bullying, saying something disgusting and harassment are subjective and possibly difficult to prove.

Threats to kill or hacking the white house / pentagon are something else entirely.

Texas is a red state so presumably has quite relaxed laws on what one can say on the internet maybe (uk person talking )

I think you have the wrong take on what I said.

They feel like an outcast because they don't fit in. Now think of it from the comprehension of those who are looking at the one on the spectrum and they can't fathom out why this person is different to them? Why does he not act like us? Why do they not want to be with us when we have gone out of the way to invite him? To them, they don't understand why someone acts in a different way because they can't comprehend it... It is like trying to understand someone who can speak english but are from a very different culture and from a different part of the earth. The words seem the same but somehow the meanings of those words to each party involved are different and so each party will go thinking they have communicated efficiently but what they think they know is a different concept to what should have been said, and the outcomes can cause conflict where both parties think the other is being unreasonable and there ends up bad feeling.

I agree with your interpretation of mismatched perceptions but I think directing anger against autism advocates is going about this the wrong way.

In subsequent posts it is said that he blames "neurodiversity extremists." But why would a "neurodiversity extremist" threaten to kill his son? This seems highly unlikely.

It's certainly possible that he has gotten criticism from autistic adults on the grounds that he is violating his son's privacy. See:

- On Digital Exhibitionism By Autism Parents: Why Parents Live Tweeting Their Disabled Children's Worst Moments Is Red Flag That Should Concern Everyone - Sunday, March 8, 2015
- 16 MUST SEE Memes That Nail What It’s Like To Have an “Autism Parent”

But, if autistic writers like the above were to take any action beyond criticisms like the above, they would be far more likely to report the parent to Child Protective Services than to threaten to kill the child.