Trigger Warning: Abuse, getting away with abuse because the victim is autistic
So, I know this is a few weeks back now, but remember the couple who caged the autistic boys? They were found to be not guilty on all charges. They kept the boys in a caged room. Experts said this was ideal because autistic children preferred to be left alone anyways. There is a difference between being left alone and being kept in a cage, where being alone is not a choice. See, when you ``leave me alone" I can decide to come out and interact with you if I want to. If you put someone in a cage, they can't. Do you think they would have been found not guilty if the boys hadn't been autistic? Nope. It would have been child abuse, at the least. Maybe the unlawful imprisonment charge wasn't the best one- maybe it should have been child abuse. But the fact is, the jury found the couple not guilty pretty fast. The jury also thought it was OK to keep autistic boys in a caged room. The jury is clearly short on empathy for the autistic boys. That's a problem. There is plenty of (often above and beyond anything normal) empathy for parents, even when they are obviously abusing their autistic or otherwise disabled kids, but almost none for the autistics themselves. And that's probably why this couple was not found guilty.
So, I know this is a few weeks back now, but remember the couple who caged the autistic boys? They were found to be not guilty on all charges. They kept the boys in a caged room. Experts said this was ideal because autistic children preferred to be left alone anyways. There is a difference between being left alone and being kept in a cage, where being alone is not a choice. See, when you ``leave me alone" I can decide to come out and interact with you if I want to. If you put someone in a cage, they can't. Do you think they would have been found not guilty if the boys hadn't been autistic? Nope. It would have been child abuse, at the least. Maybe the unlawful imprisonment charge wasn't the best one- maybe it should have been child abuse. But the fact is, the jury found the couple not guilty pretty fast. The jury also thought it was OK to keep autistic boys in a caged room. The jury is clearly short on empathy for the autistic boys. That's a problem. There is plenty of (often above and beyond anything normal) empathy for parents, even when they are obviously abusing their autistic or otherwise disabled kids, but almost none for the autistics themselves. And that's probably why this couple was not found guilty.
I do remember; hadn't seen any news about the verdict, though.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe it. I'm nauseatingly familiar with just about every non-autistic's disturbing tendency to empathize with the abusive parent, rather than with the child, in these cases, but I guess I still had some faith that a jury would convict them because keeping children in cages is Wrong. I might have an overly romantic, "12 Angry Men" view of juries, seeing them as being able to simultaneously empathize with someone and also condemn what they did as wrong, illegal and deserving of punishment.
"Experts said this was ideal because autistic children preferred to be left alone anyway."
WHAT?! This makes me really, really angry. Maybe even angrier than the verdict itself --- that an "expert" on autism, on what autistic children need, could come forward and say that being kept in cages is good for us, and not be immediately disregarded as a fool at best or a hater of autistic people/enabler of abuse at worst.