Do NOT Let Hate Crimes Against Autistic Teens and Children Go Unpunished

 It's 8:54 am. Do you know who your teen's friends are? Are you talking to your teens about the nature of their friendships and what goes on in them? Parents. We must stop being so eager to make our kids indistinguishable from their peers that we place them in situations of risk like the ones I'm about to describe below. One true friend is worth 100 false ones. More friends don't make your teens more social. Good friends do.

I believe in preserving the dignity of disabled crime victims, so this is was a very difficult decision. I chose to publish a photograph because sometimes people just don't get it when we say someone was beaten by bullies. Language, particularly the use of the word "bully" rather than "assailant", diminishes what happened by word association. This was a brutal assault. This was not bullying. This is an effort to bring this understanding to people. I'm stunned at all the people who have already seen the picture below and the other photos like it in national media outlets and social media who are not understanding that someone sustained serious harm in an attack by multiple assailants.

Gavin Joseph, a teen with an Aspergers diagnosis, was brutally beaten recently.

Gavin Joseph, victim of a brutal assault by a gang of teens in
Illinois credit NY Daily News

This was done by a gang of 5 teens. They were supposed to be his friends,

This abuse seems to be becoming a terrible new trend that came to national attention with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge assault on an autistic teenager. I don't know why this is happening but it needs to stop and quickly.

Here is a breakdown of the disturbing sequence of events related to the type of catastrophe that I am so concerned about.

1. Parents, desperate to make their neurodivergent teens "indistinguishable from their peers" push them into friendships with typical teens without following up and insuring that their teens are not being used as objects of hate and bullied. 

2. Other teens, pretending to be friends, subject the neurodivergent teen to sustained verbal and physical abuse under the guise of friendship.

3. As the abuse is not reported by the victim who is told by all that these are their friends, it escalates until a catastrophic abuse event occurs.

4. The perpetrators often brazenly record the event.

5. Parents discover the abuse and display video, photographs and other evidence all over the internet.

6. Police, in response to public outcry, pursue the perpetrators. The state and local authorities file charges against the perpetrators.

7.  No one explains to the victim's family that this is an escalation in what was a long period of abuse suffered by the victim. No one warns parents that the victim may recant or refuse to press charges for fear of losing the relationship with their abusers. Parents and the victims themselves seem to be unaware of the dynamics of abusive relationships, and that the wish to not press charges may be an indication of Stockholm syndrome (see definition below).

8. Where charges are filed no discussion of the fact that crimes of this nature against disabled people are considered hate crimes and should be adjudicated accordingly happens. Parents,  perpetrators, their families, even authorities may unconsciously or deliberately gaslight the victim until charges are dropped in exchange for "an apology, autism education/awareness, and autism related community service".

9. Parents never allow the victim to speak publicly either through written communication or with an attorney but instead speak for the victim. Victims are always convinced that the fault in the matter is their diagnosis. No civil case is pursued for the cost of the years of therapy and supports the victims might need. Because "autism awareness" is more important.

The wrongness of this screams at everyone, yet the public is fine with allowing perpetrators (who admit their disdain for autistic traits and use this as an excuse to assault them) to be set free to attack someone else's teen without being truly held accountable. That is not acceptable. This puts our entire community at risk. Because the next victim could be my son or someone else's daughter.

Gavin Joseph was beaten by those he thought were his friends, taught by these false friends that his autistic characteristics are so, to use his mother's description "creepy"  that if he is abused those who do so are just uninformed and must be educated, and then Gavin is allowed to believe that community service and autism awareness for others is more important than services he needs to navigate the world after becoming the victim of a crime.  Wow. Fail.

Parents, we need to insure that our teens understand that NO ONE has a right to do this to them. No

Lauren Bush, 17, pled guilty to sustained abuse
of another autistic teen in Maryland  she and
another girl not only tortured the teen but made
DVDs of the torture, which went on for years

one should be putting their hands on our people. My God what are these parents thinking? Their sons are assaulted and they don't allow the state to hold the perpetrators accountable. THIS IS A HATE CRIME. Assault against a disabled person because their disability makes assailants uncomfortable is a HATE CRIME. This is NOT the moment people choose to do autism awareness. These individuals will go on to abuse other disabled people and may continue to target other autistic victims. Worse, these parents failed to show their son that if someone harms him they will be held accountable such that they cannot harm him again.

This behavior on the part of parents of both the perpetrators and victims comes from a fundamentally ableist view that those qualities that make a person autistic are at fault for every negative event or criminal act against the victim. When parents allow the abusers of their disabled teens to walk free with an apology they are broadcasting a statement that disabled victims don't matter. The victim's human rights are violated, and their own parents are saying this is okay. Should parents of the perpetrators believe that this heinous crime against another teen should not merit jail time because the victim is disabled? No, I'm sorry. Disabled victims aren't less. If this were a teen without a diagnosis of Aspergers, if the teen were trans, or a racial minority, would they also be expected to allow the perpetrators to go free? Would this not be considered a hate crime?

Attorney and disability rights activist Shain Neumeier emphasized the problematic nature of a sentence of community service:

 "I was also really bothered by the element of the perpetrator having to do community service with other disabled people. One, disabled people are not punishment. Two, why should disabled people be stuck around a total (redacted) serving as his Get Out of Jail Free card?"

 Yet the media is spinning this story as if the victim taught his abusers a lesson?  Crimes against disabled people are now hate crimes for a reason. Sadly, these crimes are rarely prosecuted unless the victim is murdered, and the perpetrators often go on to target other disabled victims.

Thank God all parents aren't this oblivious to the impact this can have on our entire community. The parents of another autistic teenager who truly believed his abusers were his girlfriends did not back down, sympathize with the perpetrators, or blame the victim's disability and pursued charges against those who tortured and sexually abused him. Lauren Bush, his 17 year old classmate, and another 15 year old girl, presented themselves as his friends. He thought this torturing was friendship.  The parents' opinion differed from the teen's. He spoke to the press also, expressing why he did not wish to press charges and citing that one of the perpetrators said she was his girlfriend and this is why he submitted to the abuse. His parents expressed their disagreement with their son. But they respected his right to speak for himself, whether that be in verbal or written form or through an attorney, and treated him the way parents would treat any teen crime victim. They didn't speak for him even when they did not agree with him. But they also recognized that their son was the victim of prolonged abuse, and may not be aware of the impact this has on him. I also need to note that the perpetrators recorded the abuse, but we will never see it because the parents kept the recordings off the Internet.

It is up to us, every stakeholder in the autism and disability rights community to insure our people aren't abused like this anymore. We have to insure our teens get justice when they are the victims of violence and that what happened is not trivialized and spun as something to be forgiven. We have to work with our disabled disability rights activists and come up with a way to deliver a clear message to our teens and parents of what an abusive relationship is and we have to teach families to watch for the signs of abusive friendships before they escalate into the vicious assaults coming to light in the press these days.

Where are the voices of the disability rights advocacy organizations and the disability law centers on this topic? Whether the family or the local government wishes to pursue charges or not, the nature of these assaults should disturb people enough that someone should be filing a request the federal government pursue these incidents as hate crimes.

If the perpetrators were the parents, this would be front page news and everyone would have something to say.

 No experiment in socialization is worth victimizing ones children and having them assaulted. This is not a "teachable moment". This is moment you seek justice and show your teen they are people and have human rights. This is the moment one seek reparations for the years of therapeutic supports your surviving crime victim will need to overcome what was done to them. This is the time you seek family counseling for healing.

The saddest part about this is the trauma suffered by these victims will not manifest all at once. It will surface over time, and the victims will need intensive supports to overcome this. This should have been paid for by the assailants because they are the cause of it.

Disability rights, human rights, and social justice organizations.  Don't remain silent about these assaults and the rush to commute sentencing to community service and autism awareness. Please stand up for these victims. Help them.

Maybe we should take a break from yelling at the ignorant rants of movie stars who post photos that thoughtless parents themselves post publicly of their children's worst moments. Maybe we need a hiatus from arguing with the intractable ignorance entrenched in fear based parental groups fixated on proving the cause of their children's autism because they believe this will somehow miraculously solve everything. Maybe we should start doing work to mitigate this sequence of catastrophic events from happening to our people and insuring if it does happen someone is properly held accountable and the hate crime protections given to our community aren't just words on paper.

It is good that we mourn our dead and seek justice for the victims of murder by those they love and trust. Can we now fight for the living more too?

-------------------------

This post is dedicated to every autistic survivor of abuse, the autistic teens still being harmed out there, and the parents who stand with them.  Healing strength and love. Teens, don't be afraid of losing friends. Tell your parents or any adult you trust if this is happening to you.  kç

Special thanks to topic experts:

Shain Neumeier Esq.
Kassiane Sibley, Activist, Author, Topic expert We Are Like You Child Collective founder
Sparrow Rose Jones, Author, and blogger at  Unstrange Mind: Remapping My World
Savannah Nicole Logsdon-Breakstone, Activist, topic expert, blogger at Cracked Mirror In Shalott
Paula C. Durbin-Westby , Activist, topic blogger at  Paula Durbin Westby, Autistic

And all the survivors who bravely shared traumatic moments to help make this post better understood.

References

Why do victims of bullying not tell?
http://bullying.about.com/od/Victims/a/8-Reasons-Why-Victims-Of-Bullying-Dont-Tell.htm

Why a victim might not wish to press charges or report bullying:
Children Are Less Likely to Report Bullying if They Consider the Bully a Friend

What do I mean by Stockholm Syndrome?

1. Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors.Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes "strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other."[4] i -
2. Wikipedia

This is Autism

image of the words This Is Autism

My issues with Autism Speaks as an organization have a very basic root. Two grandparents who hate autism and want to eradicate it founded Autism Speaks.  Everything Autism Speaks has done since February of 2005 has been driven by a view of disability in general and autism in particular that is antiquated and is causing great harm when the intention is to do good for the autism community.

My amazing son was diagnosed with autism before Autism Speaks was founded.
He is autism.

Image description: multiracial male child
sitting with back to camera wearing a Baltimore Raven's cap

Before Autism Speaks began its avaricious acquisitions of every nonprofit raising funds for autism research, prior to their overwhelming, depressing presentation of autism to the world, our family lived, loved, and sought out people and organizations locally who really helped improve our son’s quality of life. Our son has gotten opportunities to swim, acquired needed supports and adaptive equipment, all because of nonprofit organizations and autistic activists that most people have not even heard of outside of our area. None of these organizations were Autism Speaks. People have taken him to Amish country, given him trucks, pumpkins, hugs, stuffed bears, books, iPad apps, and holiday lights. But the most important gift he’s received is one that Autism Speaks refuses to give: respect.

When people learn my son is autistic and has a great many challenges, their first response is to encourage me to raise money for Autism Speaks. My son cannot be near that loud assault on everyone’s senses that is their annual walk in D.C. I can’t be there. It is, like everything in the Autism Speaks brand, very unfriendly to autistic children and adults, and too much of the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

Suzanne and Bob Wright grew up during the era of the Jerry Lewis telethon fund raising approach. Children were used without thought that they were human beings and humiliated in the name of raising money for a cause. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Wright have not seen the documentary “The Kids are All Right”. I don’t know. I just know that from their very first nationwide public service announcement attempt, “Autism Every Day”, my family stood back in open-mouthed horror, saying Autism Speaks is not the way to help our family.

Our point of view on the statement “this is autism” is akin to that of Christopher Reeve, who drove change in the way researchers approach solutions for disability by issuing a challenge described anecdotally during a TED talk by Prof.  Grégoire Courtine.  Mr. Reeve demanded researchers think beyond the lab and “go to the rehab center, “watch people fighting to take a step” — and then figure out what he could do in the laboratory to make those people’s lives better.” Courtine makes a very critical point prior to any further discussion of his research. He describes Mr. Reeve as one of his mentors and states clearly that Mr. Reeve’s challenge resulted in an interdisciplinary approach to research on spinal cord injury.  He later makes it clear that the goal of the team is to produce a series of minute prosthetic devices that can work as any assistive technology device or support would; that is to say, the devices would assist and meet the individual needs to accommodate individual impairment and allow the brain to adjust itself and reduce the impairment. This is qualitatively different from the idea of a cure.

Autistic activists as mentors? Yes. This is autism.

One of our biggest wars in the autism community is that those insisting on driving policy, research, and decisions affecting our children’s entire lives don’t have respect for the most important stakeholders in this community: the autistic people themselves. The disrespected population includes our children. Our children, you see are growing up. These very capable, competent people, who should be seen as our mentors, are shouting the same challenge to researchers, educators, nonprofits, and caregivers who insist they speak for my son and his peers when they’ve never met him. They are saying listen to us. Listen to the primary stakeholders in this. First listen to the challenges, needs, and experiences of my son’s people. Then include them meaningfully in your decision making process.

Autism has great diversity in the way it is expressed. So each individual has different needs. How then does Autism Speaks think it can demand a national plan alone while continuing to exclude those it claims to represent?

I fight the Autism Wars for my son, the great and powerful Mu. How can anyone look at the efforts my son makes each day to gain mastery over any task and not respect him? Could you remain kind and patient while people discuss how your existence destroys lives and wail about what a burden everyone like you is? These things are said in front of autistic adults and children who can read, hear, and understand.  How dare anyone see my son as less human than the any other person? He has climbed mountains compared to children his age. He has forded rivers of impairment and conquered them. He does not want any organization presenting him as something to be pitied, behaviorally contained, chemically lobotomized. He is learning to do things autonomously. He is using technology to be independent. So how is it that someone who knows that battlefront and is a veteran of it is not respected enough to be at the forefront of any discussion about how to accommodate, include, and accept him?

Respect is autism. 
Representation is autism. 
Inclusion is autism.
Autonomy is autism. 
Accommodation is autism. 
Acceptance is autism.

These things are autism. We, our family, reject anything less.

Autism Speaks is wrong. I stand by my son and demand his right to representation in any discussion on what the future of the autistic population is. Considering that the only autistic person in Autism Speaks resigned calling on Autism Speaks to respect autistic people and give them representation in their own affairs, I think that the  Congressional Autism Caucus, and every other stakeholder in national policy, health care, research, education, and community life should listen to people who truly represent our son.

Autistic people are autism.

Dear Autism Speaks. It is time for a road trip. Leave the bubble of your antiquated ableist views of what disability is and stop speaking for those you don’t understand. Travel the country; come as people who want to understand those who they present themselves are serving. Go to where autistic people are fighting for the dignity and human rights of their peers. Look at what is happening to families. Listen to autistic people. Listen to parents.

Most importantly, kindly stop disrespecting my son and his people.

Self Advocacy: Fighting For Understanding, Acknowledgement and Accommodation

When we are future planning for our children, we assume they will get the accommodations mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that is not always the case. I invited Ondrea to share her recent fight for transit support because the present system uses medical standards to determine eligibility for para-transit support, and this criteria excludes the entire population of individuals who may not have visible impairment, but who still need services like para-transit support to help navigate their communities independently and without harassment. So as Ondrea relates her situation and her determination to fight for the right to ride the Ride para-transit service, we who are parent advocates might take a good hard look at our own communities and see how we can change what eligibility is to gain more autonomy for everyone whose challenges may not be apparent.  Learn more about Ondrea by  clicking here. KC

 By Ondrea Marisa Robinson

The need for services is not easy for anyone with a disability to get, because sometimes the door slams in his/her face when he/she really needs that door open.  The example I am about to give you applies to me:

Image description: RIPTA RIde vehicle #0141
in downtown Providence

I found out that I had to re-apply to receive my ADA, which is the American with Disabilities Act status, in order to ride the RIDE van to and from places in place of managing the transitions for so many buses in order to get from Point A to Point B to Point C. ( I had to get my primary care physician to fill out the medical part as well.)  Once the application was sent in for review, I had to wait a little while before I got a letter in the mail indicating if I was accepted or denied.  The truth is, I did not know I had the ADA after receiving a letter on two different occasions, saying that I was denied.  I was able to actually take the RIDE van to the Autism Project in Johnston, RI, and back home, for free, although I ended up paying $4.00 when I was going there.  (The ADA fee is $4.00 each way although I do have a bus pass.  It makes no sense to me why I have to pay, but that's the rule.)  It seemed like a long time for a letter to be sent, so I decided to call RIPTA and ask what was the status of my application was.

RIPTA Gillig #0517 buspicks up customers
on the #51 line at Kennedy Plaza.

I was told I was denied, because the primary care physician had checked that I was able to take the bus independently and that I did not need an escort.  I can get to and from a bus stop.  I can climb the railings just fine.  I can understand directions.  I won't deny all that, because it is true.  However, I get anxious at times when the bus is crowded, and sometimes it is not pleasant, either, when I have to deal with some people who just say some inappropriate things.  It is bad enough I have to take three buses to get to destinations like Providence or Johnston.  I tried to tell the customer service representative that anxiousness and multiple changes of buses were the issues, but she was going by what the primary care physician said (although I will not deny it).  To me, that's clueless, because if those two ladies were in my shoes, they would know how it feels to have autism.  Having autism related sensory issues and being anxious is challenge enough to have the reasonable accommodation the RIDE van service provides.

It's not fair that I have to be denied, but I'm going to do everything that I can to fight this, and I will not do it alone.  But I must remember I'm not the only one who is going through a situation like this.  Despite what's going on, I'm going to keep on smiling and let God do His work.



Images source: Wikipedia.