Tag Archives: abuse

“People Have to Listen”

Posted on June 13, 2013 | 3 Comments

Stop Hurting Kids is a campaign to “end restraint and seclusion abuse in schools.”  Restraint and Seclusion: Hear Our Stories is a 27 minute film by documentary filmmaker, Dan Habib.   Creator of Including Samuel and Who Cares About Kelsey?  Dan Habib is “Filmmaker in Residence at the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire.”  The transcript of Restraint and Seclusion is available here.

For those of you who do not have the time or inclination to watch the film, here are a few quotes from it, which I hope will serve to pique your interest enough to watch the film in its entirety.  Because this is happening all around us, because this could be one of our children, because we, as a society, must become aware of what is going on, because without awareness and protest this will continue, because prejudice and brutality are not the answer, because as Barb Rentenbach continues to remind us, I might be you, because as my daughter, Emma has said on numerous occasions, “People have to listen.  Mommy, people do not listen to Emma.”

“The National Disability Rights Network reported that in recent years, the misuse of restraint and seclusion has resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries.”

Peyton Goddard – “It was bruted power jired by purses wrongfully called teachers trying to beat I. This war wasted my rest. The sweet in I evaporated out.”

Helena – “He slammed me up against the wall, arm barred me across the throat and lifted up so I couldn’t breathe. And then whispered, “How am I supposed to talk to you nice and slow so you can understand?”

Wil Beaudoin - “One particular day we went to see my son and we were going to give him a haircut. So, we took off his shirt and he was covered with bruises and abrasions, fifteen to twenty on his body…everywhere.”

Peyton Goddard - “Fright opted I timid, silent and unable to fight back. Telling myself sweet lies that the tortures did not matter.”

Brianna – “I did not have a speech-generating device. Good evaluation would have made that happen. I tried to tell my mother. She did not understand me or she thought the teachers knew everything.” 

Peyton Goddard – “Try to see potent powerful potentials in each pierced person. There you will free their gifts. There I can feel I’m treasured. There nary I’m fret. I’m ready. Are you? Try please.”

Larry Bissonnette, Peyton Goddard and Tracy Thresher at TASH

TASH 6

 

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Posted in Autism, Autistic Role Models, Barb Rentenbach

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The Wisdom of Peyton Goddard

Posted on May 13, 2013 | 12 Comments

Peyton Goddard, wrote a memoir with her mother Dianne Goddard and Carol Cujec entitled, i am intelligent.  It is an unforgettable book.  Recently, Peyton gave a presentation in San Diego, where she typed, “After decades of torture, still each dawn I struggle to feel my worth.”  You can read her entire presentation ‘here‘.

“After decades of torture, still each dawn I struggle to feel my worth.”

Peyton was not tortured by her autism.  Peyton was tortured by non autistic people who cruelly and viciously hurt her over and over.  People who used the fact that she could not use her voice to speak to protect themselves.  I would like to believe we are moving away from a world and society where abusing people we have deemed “inferior” is done.  I would like to believe that, but I cannot.  The abuse of Autistic people at the hands of those who care for them, whose job it is to help them, continues.  The abuse of Autistic people by society, continues.  The abuse of Autistic people by those who are either ignorant or misinformed continues.  The abuse of Autistic people by those who pretend it isn’t abuse because they choose to believe Autistic people are incapable of feeling or really understanding what’s happening to them and therefore it’s okay, continues.

“Estimate I that anger in this pesty world is because pierced persons think hurting others will strip their own hurts away.” ~ Peyton Goddard

In her book Peyton writes about forgiveness.  Forgiveness of those who have hurt her the most.  Peyton Goddard is leading the way, with wisdom, kindness, forgiveness and compassion.

Peyton Goddard – a non-speaking Autistic woman, assumed incapable, presumed incompetent – has a great deal to teach us.

Three Non-Speaking “Teachers”:  Larry Bissonnette, Peyton Goddard & Tracy Thresher

TASH 6

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Posted in Autism, i am intelligent, Peyton Goddard

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IS Autism an Epidemic?

Posted on October 19, 2012 | 40 Comments

When Emma was diagnosed as Autistic, we read that autism was an “epidemic”.   I remember the figures – 1 in 166.  In 1980 the rate was 1 in 10,000 according to others it was more like 1 in 2,500.  Andrew Wakefield had published his “study” of 12 subjects in The Lancet, regarding his belief that vaccines were linked to autism, six years before.  The Lancet’s retraction of the Wakefield study did not occur until 2010, and the fallout was, at the time of Emma’s diagnosis, being widely felt.  What I didn’t know, until much later, was that Wakefield had applied for a patent just nine months prior to the publication of his, now discredited, study for a new MMR vaccine that he said was safer.  Wakefield, it seems, stood to make an enormous amount of money.  Yet I and many parents like me wondered if there was truth to Wakefield’s “findings”.  Despite subsequent studies showing that his findings were false, people wondered.  After all, autism was an “epidemic” so what was causing the epidemic?  It seemed vaccines provided an answer.

Except, what if there was no epidemic?  What if the word epidemic was being used by organizations intent on raising money?  These were the questions I began to ask.  If autism WASN’T an epidemic, then where were all those Autistic children when I was a kid?  And where were they now?  Why didn’t I know dozens and dozens of Autistic people?  They should be everywhere I concluded and since I didn’t know of any personally, I decided to look for them.  So began my search for Autistic people.  (I know my wording sounds archaic, but I actually meant for it to, because it illustrates my thinking not so long ago.)  I periodically googled phrases like – “where are all the autistic adults?” or “Autistic adults” or “Autistic adults in the work place” or anything else I could think of that might lead me to them.  I found very few.  I came upon Temple Grandin and Donna Williams, whose books I immediately read, there were a handful of others, but the shelves of the “Special Needs” section of the bookstores I frequented were filled with increasing numbers of memoirs written by parents, not Autistic people.  When more and more people began blogging, I started googling “Autistic blogs” and came up with not a one.  For years I would periodically look and when my searches came up empty, I concluded – It must be an epidemic.  It seemed a logical conclusion.  And eventually having concluded that autism was in fact an “epidemic” I stopped looking for Autistic adults.

Then two things happened within a six-week period.  A follower of this blog sent me a link to Julia Bascom’s blog – Just Stimming and another parent encouraged me to read the anthropologist and father of an Autistic child, Roy Richard Grinker’s Unstrange Minds:  Remapping the World of Autism who suggests autism is not an epidemic and the current rates are a more accurate reading of what has always existed.  It was a one-two punch; I began to question everything I thought I knew.  From Julia’s blog I began reading and reaching out to Autistic bloggers.  Through my, at first tentative, communications I began to find many, many more.  It was literally like discovering an alternate reality, and as mind-blowing as anything I’ve ever experienced.  The more I looked, the more I found.  Within eight months I went from not personally knowing any Autistic adults to knowing hundreds of people who are my age and older.

One friend of mine and I were discussing all of this the other day.  He pointed out that many people, like him were beaten, often brutally by their parents to make them stop their undesirable behaviors that might make them “stick out” or in any way noticeable.  He said, “People like me would hide our Autistic traits as best we could.  We were still considered the weird kids and the outcasts, but we were not called Autistic.”  He reminded me that he and others like him were trying their best to remain as “inconspicuous as possible because the only signs we had were the “Kick Me” signs that would be put on us by bullies.”  He then went on to say, “We had to do our best to be invisible and/or find a way to blend in or hide to stop the beatings by family and class-mates.”

As I think about all of this, I have more questions.  What about the autistic girls who were like my daughter?  Would my daughter, had she been born in the 50′s, have learned to “pass”?  And if so, what does that say about our school system, because Emma is in no way near grade level?  Would she have been deemed learning disabled, but taught how to “behave appropriately”?  Would she have, through punishment, been able to conform?  What about her language?  Would she have just been thought a “quiet” child?  The little girl who, if she’d been punished enough, learned to sit silently in the corner?  At what cost would this have occurred?  Or would we have been told to institutionalize her for the “good of the family”?  Would we have been advised to save our son and ourselves from being “dragged down”?  Has our thinking changed so much?

I ask these questions honestly.  It took me a very long time to find all those Autistic adults I’d been looking for since my daughter was diagnosed in 2004.  When I was still looking, I never, not for a second, thought in finding, I would also find hope.   It never occurred to me that I would form relationships that are, not only important to me, but relationships I cannot imagine being without.  Friendships that are vitally important to me, people I love and look forward to seeing and spending time with.  People who would patiently explain to me what it was like growing up in an era that did not “recognize” autism.  People who try to help me understand what it is like living in a society that does not want to see or hear them.  People who do not enjoy the basic rights I enjoy and do not even think about.  People who are condemned, abused and misunderstood.  And yet, that is exactly what happened.

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Posted in Autism, Parenting, vaccinations

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The Insidiousness of Prejudice

Posted on October 18, 2012 | 26 Comments

A year ago, I would have gone to a parent/teacher conference and not thought twice about my daughter being in the same room while we spoke about her.  Six months ago, I knew enough to know that she understood what was being said even if she didn’t indicate that she did and would move to another room or arrange for child care during a conference so she would not be present.

This morning I received a passionate comment from someone who was responding to another comment about parent/teacher conferences.   You can see the whole comment by going to yesterday’s post, but she ended with this:

“These things can ONLY happen in context of a culture of acceptance of the exclusion of Autistic people from discussions about our own lives, and of acceptance of the ‘need’ to speak of us in negative inaccurate terms because that supposedly fulfills some ‘need’ that will bring us help and support. It doesn’t EVER bring us the support we actually need because negative inaccurate information ‘about’ us means any support is founded in untruth and therefore is not help and support of US as the ACTUAL human beings we are.

PLEASE, if you truly want to help Autistic people, stand up for our right to be part of the conversation about our own lives from a VERY young age. Advocating FOR us is GREAT, but ONLY if the purpose of that is to support us in our SELF-advocacy… and to put pressure on professionals to accept OUR voices and OUR choices as the determining forces in OUR lives.”

My initial reaction was a defensive one.  My first thought was – but children are never present at parent/teacher conferences.  And then I realized that isn’t true.  My son Nic is asked to attend our parent/teacher conferences and has been required to attend them since he entered middle school (the fifth grade, the age Emma is now).  My second thought was, but what if one of her teachers or an aide said something awful about Emma in front of her, what if they spoke of her in language that would be hurtful?  I can’t control how others speak.  But then I realized that were this to happen in my son’s presence I would not hesitate in saying something in front of him to that person.  I would correct them and tell them why it was unacceptable and he would hear this and understand that this person was wrong in speaking this way about him.  Then I thought, but wait, we might need to discuss topics that might make her sad, things about self-injurious behaviors or how she ran out into the hallway and it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to hear these kinds of conversations, but again I thought of my son and realized how we would include him in the conversation.  As I went through the various reasons why I couldn’t do what the commenter suggested, I saw quickly just how insidious the ingrained prejudices regarding autism are.  I saw how I still have so much more to learn.  And so I continue to and I tweak my thinking and my behavior and then someone else tells me something and I have to think about their words and then I have to tweak my behavior some more.

Directly after reading this thought-provoking comment (I am so grateful to the writer for having sent it) I received an email from someone I care deeply about.  I do not have explicit permission to write about the specifics so I will not, but it was about where these kinds of ingrained beliefs can lead.  It was about abuse.  It was a story I am becoming more and more familiar with.  It was about someone I know.  It was about a defenseless, nonverbal child.  It was about more than one event.  It was about many, many abuses occurring over and over by many, many different people.  My horror is never lessened no matter how many times I hear of this.  In fact my horror increases.  What I used to believe, what I used to console myself with, that these were unusual, isolated instances of horrible people behaving in heinous way, is not something I can cling to any more.  These stories are everywhere and I am hearing them all the time now.  I cannot console myself that they are unusual.  I can no longer wrap myself in a cocoon of optimistic assurances that this hasn’t happened and will never happen to my daughter, because even if we are lucky enough that they do not happen to our specific child, they are occurring constantly to other people’s children.  How is that any better?  How is that any different?

The abuse of people who are considered “less than” and “incompetent”.  The physical, sexual and emotional abuse that Autistic people and children are having to endure at the hands of people ALL THE TIME that they come into contact with, at school, their care givers, the people they are suppose to be able to trust, their relatives, neighbors, the list goes on and on.  This is going on around us and to those we love and care about.  This is about people who are hurting, not just our children, but people all over the world who are deemed “less than”.  This is so much bigger than “our children”.

Em’s “self-portrait” – 2011

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“You Have To See The Horror, But Not Be Defeated By It.”

Posted on May 22, 2012 | 12 Comments

Yesterday I had lunch with the inspirational and brilliant James Cone, also known as the “father” of black theology, and a professor at Union Theological Seminary. For those of you who aren’t familiar with James and his work, he is the man who wrote the powerful book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree.  Sometimes in life you meet people, people who are special, for whatever reason, they reach us in ways that most people do not.  James is one of those people in my life.

Over lunch, as we got on the topic of various movements:  the civil rights movement, the disabilities movement, the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) movement, he said, “You cannot let your circumstances define you, who you are, your race, your gender or what others say about you.”  And I thought about Emma and how autism is perceived by many as a tragedy.  I thought about how I don’t ever want her to define herself by the way some may see her.  I thought about how that perception does damage to so many, how the way we perceive people is how we justify our treatment of them, how we treat them differently without even realizing it.  I thought about how I want to protect Emma from that.

I thought about the neurodiversity movement and how so many Autists are speaking out, asking for acceptance, asking for respect, asking to just be heard.  I thought about all those Autists who cannot speak, who are non-verbal and cannot communicate their thoughts, ideas and opinions at all.  I thought of those who are called “severely Autistic” and I thought of those who are, at this moment, in institutions or group homes run by people who may not understand them.  People who will use their ideas and perceptions of who they think they are to treat them in ways that will hurt them.  Who fights for them?  Who ensures their rights are respected and considered?   As I thought about all of this, I felt myself falling into despair.  And then James reached over and took my hand.  He said, “You have to see the horror, but not be defeated by it.”

I thought about all the stories I’ve read of Autistics who have been abused, often by their own family members, caregivers, or in homes where they were placed.  The people who cannot fight back because they do not have words.  The people who cannot fight back because even by communicating through other devices they are viewed as less than and so their words are disregarded.  I thought of those who have risen up and despite their challenges are blogging about their experiences.  I thought of the unimaginable horrors they have endured.  ”You have to see the horror, but not be defeated by it.”

Those people have lived the horror, the rest of us are only witnesses to and only if we choose to be.  And that is a critical and striking difference.  We have a choice.  We can turn away if we choose.  We do not have to read their stories.  We do not have their memories etched into our brains, their experiences scarring our bodies.  We will not get triggered by those who behave in similar ways to the perpetrators of their abuse.  ”You have to see the horror, but not be defeated by it.”

One blog I read not long ago, described in graphic, terrifying detail the abuse she was subjected to at the hands of her stepfather, mother, siblings and cousins.  As I read her post, I thought, this isn’t abuse, this is torture.   I felt nauseous reading her blog.   When I wanted to click the little red button on the top left corner of the page to delete it forever, I had to remind myself that this is her life, the least I could do was read what she’d written.  How do you take what you’ve read and continue living your life as you had been, before you knew what you now know?

“You have to see the horror, but not be defeated by it.”

And I know.  I know I have to keep writing about all of this.  I have to keep reading the stories, they aren’t going to disappear just because I’ve made the choice not to read them.

“Strive toward an ideal,” James said at one point.  He paused and then he said, “Write where the hurt is most.”

And so I will.  I will try.  It’s the least I can do.

Emma in one of her “pretty summer dresses.”

Read My Fear Toolkit published in the Huffington Post

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Posted in Autism, Autism Acceptance, neurodiversity, Parenting

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Aspen Ideas

Posted on June 30, 2011 | 5 Comments

The word “autism” was never spoken at the session of the Aspen Ideas Festival I attended yesterday.  After it was over I wondered if I’d somehow been mistaken and reread the email I’d received .  This is the email I was sent describing the session:

“How to Recognize Happiness  June 29, breakfast,

Happiness as an ongoing state of mind–rather than a fleeting pleasurable sensation–could be recognized by the predominance of positive affects, by an ongoing freedom from inner conflicts that express themselves in obviously tormenting ways, by a sense of inner calmness, and by attitudes that reflect some kind of benevolence toward others, even though in the case of autistic children, all these may not be expressed in the usual ways.”

My guess is one of the speakers was unable to make it and so it became a more general discussion surrounding conflict, suffering and cultivating a practice to help with that.  The moderator was late, having gone for a hike in the woods and found herself lost.  But the Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, director of the Karuna-Shechen a non-profit headquartered in Kathmandu, Nepal, who in France anyway has been given the label of – happiest man on earth – questioned that title, suggesting perhaps this was a difficult thing to test for, given the world’s current population of over 6 billion people.   It was a perfectly pleasant way to spend an hour of one’s morning, especially if one had come to Aspen specifically for the Ideas Festival and didn’t have any expectations. Certainly there is much to be said about cultivating compassion and putting oneself at the service of others.  Just talk to any parent of a child with autism.

What bothers me about all of this is the lack of conversation, the reluctance to feature autism as a worthy topic. It is something I see all the time.  The people, like myself who are talking about it, are doing so because we are parents of children with autism.  Perhaps it’s seen as a downer, after all there’s no cure, we don’t know the cause, so let’s just not discuss it, let’s not have any conversations about it, let’s not even bring it up.  Maybe it’ll go away if we ignore it enough.  It’s got to be such a drag listening to someone who goes on about autism, the statistics, news stories about the rampant abuse of autistic people, it’s intractable nature, blah, blah, blah.  Why can’t I talk about something more cheerful?

Like happiness, for example.

And here’s the thing – actually I can.  In fact most of the parents with children with autism can.  We parents of autistic children have found ourselves elated by a word, a single word coming from the mouth of our child.  It doesn’t take much for us to feel joy.  Our child can hug us and that lone hug is something we remember as though we had received the Nobel Prize.  Maybe, just maybe, we don’t know the cause, we don’t know the best way to treat it, because autism isn’t viewed with the same sort of panic the avian flu received or mad cow disease or any of a number of topics which swept all of us up in a frenzy of terror.

According to the CDC at least 1% of our population has been diagnosed with autism.  That’s over 60,000,000 autistic people world wide.  60 MILLION!  And yet, autism, gets a big yawn.  So here’s an idea, let’s keep ignoring it, let’s all agree not to discuss autism, because what’s the point really?

By the way, just in case anyone’s wondering, I’m the mother of a beautiful little girl who’s Great-grandfather began the Aspen Institute and who’s hope for the future gets dimmer by the second.

For more on Emma’s journey through a childhood of autism go to:  www.EmmasHopeBook.com

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Taking a Stand

Posted on June 7, 2011 | 3 Comments

This blog is about Emma.  It has always been about Emma.  Every now and again I post something about statistics or links to other children or adults who have been diagnosed with autism, the occasional news item, but for the most part, Emma is the star of this blog.  Today however, I feel compelled to write about the children and adults with disabilities who have been institutionalized.  The defenseless portion of our population who do not have parents or families to advocate and defend them for whatever reason.

Yesterday I happened upon an article in the New York Times about a 13 year old boy with autism who was sat on and ultimately crushed to death in the back seat of a van while being taunted, “I could be a good king or a bad king,” by a state employee who was hired to care for the child.  The article goes on to describe in graphic detail the abuse that occurred, the repeated hospitalizations, the horrifying conditions of the Oswald D. Heck Developmental Center,  a state run home for children and people with disabilities near Albany, New York.  An institution which routinely hires high school drop outs, people with criminal records, histories of drug and alcohol abuse and little or no training to care for our most vulnerable.

It is difficult not to console oneself, while reading such an article, with the idea that this was an isolated incident or at least a problem within this specific institution.  Sadly it is not.  Another article, also in the New York Times, which ran a few months ago about the systematic abuse that continues in several group homes was equally horrifying.   The BBC ran a piece just last week on the terrifying cruelty and abuse in homes caring for the disabled in the UK.  In fact, once I began digging around it wasn’t hard to find countless articles about rampant abuse taking place in group homes, state run facilities, institutions, privately run group homes all for the disabled, those diagnosed with autism, downs syndrome, cerebral palsy and the like.  What was incredible was the amount of actual video footage of the abuse, testimony from witnesses, doctors, nurses, hospital records, irrefutable proof and yet it continues.

We talk about torture, the horrors of genocide all in the context of war and yet we have people, here in America, doing unspeakable things to our disabled population and it goes unnoticed, in fact it is even condoned within many of these homes.  There is a “keep your eyes open and your mouth shut” policy at many of these homes.  We have a burgeoning population of defenseless, often non-verbal children and adults who are being raped and tortured.  If you object to the use of the words “rape and torture” consider this from the NY Times on March 12, 2011 by Danny Hakim:

“At a home upstate in Hudson Falls, two days before Christmas in 2006, an employee discovered her supervisor, Ricky W. Sousie, in the bedroom of a severely disabled, 54-year-old woman. Mr. Sousie, a stocky man with wispy hair, was standing between the woman’s legs. His pants were around his ankles, his hand was on her knee and her diaper was pulled down.  The police were called, and semen was found on the victim. But the state did not seek to discipline Mr. Sousie. Instead, it transferred him to work at another home.”

The BBC report on May 31, 2011 – “…Wayne restrained Simone, an 18-year-old who suffers from a genetic abnormality, by pinning her down under his chair for half an hour. Another member of staff holds her in a headlock, despite the fact she shows no signs of resistance.

The footage also shows Simone being subjected to two cold showers in a single day with staff pouring mouthwash and shampoo over her she screams, saying: “It’s cold mum”.

That afternoon, with temperatures just above freezing, Wayne is filmed taking Simone into the garden and pouring a jug of cold water over her head. He only relents and takes her inside after she lies listlessly on the ground, convulsing with cold.

When Simone is unable to sleep that night staff repeatedly pour cold water over her in the corridor, before holding a cold fan to her face.

The day ends with staff dragging her into her room and forcing her to take a paracetamol while Graham, another member of staff, plays the role of German commandant shouting: “Nein, nein, nein”. Despite the serious nature of the abuse Kelvin, a senior nurse, refuses to intervene.”

We say things like – “never again,” we want to believe we learn from our mistakes, from history and yet there is no evidence to support this kind of thinking.  The population that is being abused in all of these reports are our most vulnerable – children and adults who cannot speak out, who cannot accuse, who cannot defend themselves.  And yet it goes on.  There is nothing new about any of this.  The reports of abuse are haunting, horrible, beyond description, the brutality, the sadism, the cruelty is inhuman, all the more so because it is children and adults with disabilities being victimized.

And yet it continues.

What can any one of us do?

We can begin by confronting and honoring what is happening by speaking out against it, by demanding the politicians we vote into office are aware and are willing to take a stand.  This is not a problem that will go away because we want it to, because it’s too painful to read about.  It will only end when we decide it deserves our attention as much as the populations of various countries we have chosen to defend by sending our troops to.

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