The MYTH of AUTISM - How a misunderstood Epidemic is destroying our Children

Den enda regeln är att det är,visa hänsyn och respekt , allas upplevelser, tankar, åsikter och känslor förtjänar att vara okränkbara i den här tråden, har man starkt motsatta åsikter uttrycker man det i stället för att gå till attack.Om någon skulle skriva något man blir väldigt känslomässig av får man hålla det tillbaka om man inte kan uttrycka det sansat

HOPELESSNESS & DESPAIR.

What it's like to be disabled, to reach out for help only to have your most basic human rights repeatedly violated, and to know that there is nothing you can do about it.

The Empathy Issue is a Human Rights Issue


Empathy. For most people, the word is synonymous with humanity.
The American Psychological Association calls empathy "the trait that makes us human." 

1 According to author D.H. Pink, empathy is “a universal language that connects us beyond country or culture. Empathy makes us human. Empathy brings joy…. Empathy is an essential part of living a life of meaning.” 

2 In the popular mind, in scientific journals, and in autism-related books and websites, the canard that autistic people innately lack empathy (or have deeply impaired empathy) continues to hold sway. Of the innumerable reiterations of this trope, a few representative instances will have to suffice:
According to Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Lindsay M. Oberman, “[T]he chief diagnostic signs of autism are social isolation, lack of eye contact, poor language capacity and absence of empathy…”

3 In his latest book, Simon Baron-Cohen writes that autistic people have “abnormalities in the empathy circuit in their brains” resulting in “zero degrees of empathy.” 

4 And in a truly shameless display, physician Roy Q. Sanders, Medical Director of the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta, GA suggests that “teaching empathy to someone with autism/Asperger’s is almost like teaching a pig to sing — it is a waste of time and annoys the pig (at least most of the time).” 

Adult Asperger's Predjudice Witnessed In E.R.


Uppladdad den 29 maj 2009
It's time for the medical community to be held accountable for ignorance and abuse against people with autism spectrum disorders. They need to be educated about what ASDs are and the symptoms they present. My mother and advocate saved me from receiving a shot of medication I was allergic to and filed a report against a nurse who delighted in her authority, exercising it as abuse in place of compassion. An apology is better than nothing, but it isn't enough. This will happen again. PLEASE SHARE YOUR E.R. MELTDOWN EXPERIENCES AND WHAT ACTION YOU TOOK VIA VIDEO RESPONSE. I am hoping to get enough responses to e-mail this video to sources where it would be beneficial to the autism community.

About Being Considered "Retarded"

I made this video after seeing a number of things: Other disabled people rushing to prove that they were not some thing called "retarded," being referred to here as a "mong" and other such words myself (on and off YouTube) as well as seeing lots of pointless ridicule directed at people with developmental disabilities, and being asked questions about what it's like to be considered "retarded" in casual contacts with people, or to "look retarded", whatever that means. I explore these questions, and the prejudice and dehumanization that surrounds cognitive disability of all sorts, in my video. (Yes, this is a serious video, not poking fun at people.) Apologies for the splicing, the construction noises in the background, etc, that's to do with the equipment I have to work with here at the moment. This video is captioned.

Adriana Gamondes skrev:In This Day and Age: Abuse, Deaths and Injuries in Schools and Institutions and the Debate Over Cameras to Protect the Disabled

By Adriana Gamondes
According to a 2008 study performed in Denmark, the mortality rate for individuals with autism is twice that of the general population. A more recent Swedish study found the rate 5.6 fold higher than expected. Whichever is the true number, the message is clear: far more disabled die young. Among the more common causes of death such as seizure, accident and circulatory disease, asphyxiation is included among unnatural causes.   

Michael Carey’s thirteen year old son was one of the victims of “increased mortality”—a euphemism for the violent death Jonathan Carey suffered at the hands of staff at the O.D. Heck state residential care facility in New York. Since Jonathan’s death in 2007, Michael Carrey has lobbied for improvements within the state’s dangerous disability system, including calling for video and audio surveillance of all special needs classrooms, on transportation, in group and residential homes.

What happened in place of the changes Carey battled for appears to be worse than nothing. The bill signed by Governor Cuomo in June created yet another go-between agency to divert calls and reports of institutional abuse away from 911 and law enforcement. The bill also givespower to the governor to appoint institutional officials and makes the prosecution of accused care workers and administrators more difficult than it already was by raising the bar from “credible evidence” to “preponderance of evidence.” Carey believes the bill was clearly intended to prevent reports of institutional abuse from reaching the justice system.  

Even after Jonathan’s death was covered in The New York Times, the abuse at the center continued according to care worker Mary Maioriello, who provided the Times with recordings of  O.D. Heck administrators taken secretly during meetings in which these administrators fail to show much interest in or stop the assaults and systematic degradation of residents which Maioriello. After the tapes were released, the administrators were replaced. 

The need for surveillance is often demonstrated by surveillance. Educators and caretakers like Maioriello have argued that they want cameras in classrooms and buses for the protection of vulnerable children and adults as well as protection for staff and support for whistleblowers.  School bus driver Yvonne Mack Colclough forced a district to investigate staff assault on a child with autism when she demanded that the district review the bus video recording.

She felt the school still sanctioned her for putting children first, though they could not charge her with making false reports, which has happened to other whistleblowers; and the culprits were arrested, which is quite rare in school abuse cases. One ironic argument against cameras in schools and buses is that “educators put up with a lot from kids”—indeed they do. Just ask bus monitor Karen Klein—a beacon of clemency in the face of really vile verbal abuse by typical students.

Her case demonstrates the upside for staff of having audio and video, since those who saw the tape raised over half a million dollars for her. What’s potentially objectionable in the Klein coverage is that one of the bullies is visible in the Youtube recording. As rotten as his behavior was, he’s still a minor and should be privacy protected in the media. I’m only sharing it because it’s already been widely shared but it’s regrettable that the child’s face wasn’t blurred or pixelated.

Mainstream media tends to be legally cautious about obscuring identity for minors, particularly those who could be committing a crime, but obviously the practice needs to be extended to social media as well. Privacy is the central sticking point in the camera debate in general. On the one hand, government employees have limited expectations of privacy while on the job and, if families had equal access, the cameras would be turned on “Big Brother” in effect.

This would also be true of most private disability schools which take district tuition for outplacement.  On the other hand, there are very legitimate arguments in defense of civil liberties that cameras in schools could have a stultifying effect on student individuality. In a discussion of the Surveillance State, Salon blogger Glen Greenwald criticized the policy of placing cameras on school buses because of the Pavlovian effect it would have on children. In his argument, Greenwald discussed only minor peer bullying, not the more extreme types of incident which frequently effect disabled children (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE,HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE).

Greenwald also doesn’t mention the rate of sexual abuse of children by adults in schools, which reportedly impacts somewhere between 3.7% and 10% of students under 18. In fact, California may eventually have mandated surveillance in schools due to reports of rampant sexual abuse of children, which is apparently not limited to Penn State or the Catholic Church.

Tim Stanley of The Telegraph wrote:
Certainly, paedophile activities are not limited to the American Catholic Church. A recent report by the US Department of Education revealed that a child is more than 100 times more likely to be sexually abused by a public school teacher than by a priest. To quote: “a study by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded that 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.

In contrast, [it] extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.” Ergo, Sandusky’s activities are part of a wider story of criminal infiltration of our national institutions. And who will stop it? Whistleblowers are not alone in encountering bureaucratic retaliation.School retaliation against parents attempting to advocate against abuse of disabled students or denial of services has risen with the rate of disability.

Retaliation can be defined as “using official resources to ‘punish’ parents,” and it can take a wide range of forms from refusing to respond to emails or return phone calls, not allowing parents to view records, or continually canceling school meetings and conferences.  But sometimes the retaliation can be more sinister.  Anecdotally the internet is filled with stories of parents who claim their school districts have reported them to child protective services,filed truancy charges against them, or had restraining orders imposed on them, all as the result of their advocacy on behalf of their children. 

The more the Department of Education carves out legal immunity for schools and the more advocates are disempowered, the more schools will appear as a haven for every species of child abuser.  This is especially true of disability-only schools and classrooms, where most of the deaths and injuries to students occur.  Disabled children are also at a doubled risk of sexual abuse: the epidemic has served up an endless supply of silent victims.

The statistics are very disturbing but Greenwald still has a point: certain genuine crises can too easily be used as Trojan horses for incursions on constitutionally-protected freedoms. Take Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez’s misrepresentation of “online predators” as part of his administration’s campaign to justify internet surveillance—this from the man who signed off on water boarding.  Anyone questioning the campaign’s noble surface motives—combatting pedophilia— risked being accused of a “pro-molestation” stance or being “anti-child safety.”

This is why facts are important especially when an issue is a moral hostage-taker and can be used to disguise government over-reach. Though there probably are a huge number of online predators, the answer may be more vigilant parental monitoring, not the death of internet privacy. By a similar token, putting cameras in schools and on buses and allowing parent access could arguably be a piecemeal policy, not a bid to put more cameras up in public spaces and increase domestic surveillance. In any event I agree that cameras should be taken down from public squares and warrantless domestic spying should cease in the US.  

If there are counterbalances to prevent school surveillance from being institutionally misused to suppress student individuality or political freedom, these issues should certainly be explored and measures taken. But if the concern is that cameras in schools and on buses are a Trojan horse to unleash more general surveillance of private citizens, it’s important to realize that many schools already have cameras installed for internal use to bust and discipline students and protect property; and wired schools already share this evidence with law enforcement—although rarely to report on staff.

And again, families are frequently denied access to the same tapes. Maybe the answer is that a parent “union” controls the technology from the outset or parents wire individual children, waiving wiretapping constraints in the few states which require two-party consent for audiorecording (these vary in rigidity as it stands).

Regarding existing surveillance, schools in fact have no legal grounds to withhold this kind of evidence from parents if it exists, though many falsely cite student privacy concerns. Through a series of rhetorical questions, Wrightslaw  illustrates why schools cannot claim “privacy” in denying families access to video:

1. 1.      Are parents allowed to visit their child's school? (To meet with a teacher, pick a child up for a doctor's appointment, etc.)
2. 2.      Are parents allowed to go on field trips?
Are parents allowed to do volunteer work at the school? 

Assuming the answers to these questions are "yes," the school's "privacy issue" argument doesn't hold water. No law prevents parents from knowing the identity of kids who attend school, or kids who are in their child's class, or kids who ride the school bus. By the time any family files a FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) request for access to tapes, schools will often “lose” the evidence, so access and enforcement are on the block for reform— otherwise the rest is already in place on paper.

Some object to cameras on the grounds that the use of restraint against the disabled students is necessary and surveillance and public “PC” misinterpretation would hinder staff and put them at risk.  But a 1999 study found that the rate of staff injuries in the most violent mental wards were reduced significantly when the use of aversives like restraint were severely limited and replaced by alternative positive strategies. Staff training decreases use of seclusion and restraint in an acute psychiatric hospital.

Forster et al.
Abstract
Rates of seclusion and restraint in an urban psychiatric hospital were compared during the 12-month periods before and after implementing the recommendations of a multidisciplinary quality improvement work-group convened to reduce the hospital's use of physical containment. Interventions included a mandatory staff training session on the management of assaultive behavior, weekly discussion items during team meetings for each local ward, and hospital-wide publicity charting the ongoing progress of the effort.

Total annual rates of restraint dropped 13.8%. The average duration of restraint per admission decreased 54.6%. Staff injuries were reduced by 18.8% during the study period.
The Government Accountability Office found in 2009 that the vast majority of deaths and injuries to disabled children in schools stemmed from restraint in response to noncompliance, not because these children posed a risk to themselves or others. This was our personal experience when our children were abused and our experience is common.

As the Forster et al. study demonstrates, training in positive strategies is crucial for reducing the potential for abuse. But Matthew Israel, the founder of the Judge Rotenberg “shock” Center— in the media again after the horrific video  emerged of a child being tortured at the center—went to Harvard.
Footage of Judge Rotenberg Center torturing a person with a disability aired in court (Graphic)

Adriana Gamondes skrev:The private school teacher who abused our daughter in 2011 has a master’s degree. Education does not guarantee ethics.  The most tragic illustration of this was the invention of totalitarianism in the twentieth century—when some of the most highly educated people in the world caused more death and destruction within a few decades than in previous centuries combined.

Training would cut down on the considerable number of deaths and injuries which occur when undertrained staff lack the means but not the will to apply positive approaches—though this would not make everyone in a system honest or endow them with compassion. Totalitarianism also brought us the surveillance state, though not surveillance of the state: that’s a democratic construct. For all these reasons, many believe that there should be federal laws in place protecting children from abusive practices in schools, including the mandated use of video surveillance with sound capacity.

All due respect to those who argue for states’ rights, but states and communities  have had many years to make reforms and little has changed.  State and local authorities have subjective and economic concerns when regional institutions are exposed as unsafe for children. For example, state authorities in Texas had received reports of deplorable conditions in state run group homes for years; but only when the infamous “fight club” video was released in the national media showing night shift workers terrorizing disabled group home residents into assaulting one another were authorities forced to respond with emergency legislation.

Though the perpetrators in this case were prosecuted, the state continues to have problems with conditions in group homes. Releasing video may bring public pressure to bear but in itself is not sufficient to enforce standards.  But public awareness and outcry typically increase with each exposure and institutions lose funding. Members of the public may wax apathetic in response to written reports of abuse of the disabled. Some might envision dangerous, rampaging mentally challenged males and be glad these individuals are “kept under control.”

But the public has a significantly different response when exposed to images of a sweet disabled adult like Taylor Hartley being brutalized by a care worker: it becomes apparent that not all the victims fit the fearful stereotype. Studyafter study in social psychology has found that breaking up stereotypes in the media has measurable impact on public attitudes. 

It matters. Reporter Donna Pitman from KMBC 9 News Kansas City recently posted a photograph of two unidentified individuals who, upon seeing a man in a wheelchair crying because he couldn’t see the stage at a concert, lifted the man up and held him for the duration of the event so he had a good view.
How did these good Samaritans come to be motivated? The public genuinely needs to be exposed to the full human side of disability—from pleasure in living and accomplishment to exposés on risk, deprivation and suffering— to break through the more shallow media rubrics.  

All the same, cameras are not a panacea and change is a process. For example, even after the Rotenberg torture video was released to the public, Massachusetts legislators left the issue out of the state budget.  But this administrative regression to “pre-video” denial has not gone over well with the public and the issue may impact elections. What are the “real numbers” for school abuse of the disabled? No one knows. There’s no mandated national reporting for schools. 

Senator Harkin’s Keeping All Students Safe Act (S. 2020 and H.R. 1831), is up for vote and attempts to address the reporting issue and others, but the bill does not include cameras, which many advocates had hoped for. In 1998, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimated that 3 individuals with special needs die every week in US schools and Institutions due to abusive practices like restraint and seclusion. The Hartford Courant, which had requested the study, concluded that the actual toll could be three to ten times higher than estimated.  

30 restraint deaths per week in the US?  A total of 1560 per year? It’s inconceivable. The estimates must be wrong. But there they are— and no one can either confirm or deny them. Granted Harvard’s estimates included adults in mental health facilities but stressed that the highest statistical risk was to children. Would it really have been so hard to hide, for example, 30 child deaths per year among approximately 4,000 children ages 0-19 who died annually in Texas in the mid-1990’s? 

Of the 23 restraint deaths within an 11 month period investigated by the Courant, 13 were children with special needs.  Only one case led to a criminal investigation. Official causes of death were variously cited as “asphyxiation,” “cardiac arrhythmia,” “severe asthma attack,” etc. Among the overall 53,000 child deaths per year in the US, more than 14,000 are attributed to a range of “natural” and “accidental” causes which could potentially conceal death by mistreatment.

The Scandinavian autism mortality studies echoed this obtuse language—causes of death are often reported simply as “cardiac insufficiency,” “circulatory disease” and “accident.”  It’s only because a Georgia school had been unable to hide its“therapeutic” mistreatment of a child with cerebral palsy that his involved parents understood how he died and were able to alert authorities.

It’s also chilling that nothing has improved since 1998 other than Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) outlawing certain forms of restraints in institutions and residential care. Though this particular law is clearly still under-enforced, it should by rights also apply to any institution which is federally funded. But state Protection and Advocacy agencies have unilaterally refused to even apply the law to schools.

So considering the six fold increase in autism since 1998 and the parallel explosion of many other types of cognitive injuries and behavioral disorders— and considering the lack of protection and enforcement in schools— there is no reason to believe the 3-per-week death toll has gone down and all the more reason to believe that the scene of the crime is likely to be schools. Again, since there’s no mandatory reporting and schools have no incentive to report on themselves, the toll could have easily risen and no one would know. 

I always shake my head when people say they can’t believe such things are happening “in this day and age,” as if human nature has somehow teleologically evolved since people skinned dogs and lit them on fire for sport in the old west or brought the kids to public executions, etc.  Nothing in history—particularly in the last century— provides us with any evidence that human nature is ethically advancing.  I think history argues that we are as good or as bad as we ever were or will be. Did anyone believe that no one would ever skin dogs again if there was no enforcement against it? Or abuse the disabled? 

If anything in society has changed from time to time, it might only prove that social organization and enforcement can promote or defeat the best or worst human motivations within systems. It’s something to think about considering that institutional treatment of the disabled—or children in general— has never been able to stand up to transparency in any day or any age.  
Connecticut Group Home Arrest (CNN)

Adriana Gamondes is a contributing editor to Age of Autism and one of our Facebook administrators. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and recovering twins.

The child abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State University proves that paedophilia isn't just a 'priest problem'

Until recently, most Americans probably associated the systematic sexual abuse of children exclusively with the Catholic Church. The scandal at Pennsylvania State University has changed all that. Allegations that the university’s assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, sexually assaulted at least eight underage boys on or near school property over a 40-year period demonstrates that paedophilia is not just a “priest problem”.

That university authorities allegedly covered up his activities also shows that it isn’t only Catholic bishops who conspire to protect their reputations at the cost of public safety. The ugly “boys’ club” culture that safeguards sexual predators is a universal problem. Jerry Sandusky roomed at the top of the American sporting establishment. From 1969 to 1999, he was assistant coach at Penn State and helped produce several pro-football greats.

He hosted celebrated summer football camps and founded a charity called The Second Milethat was officially commended by President George HW Bush in 1990. Although he never fulfilled his dream of replacing Penn State’s head coach Joe Paterno, he was honoured with Assistant Coach of the Year awards in 1986 and 1999. Sandusky was also apparently happily married, with several adopted and fostered children. The football coach’s arrest therefore marks a break from the usual media stereotype of paedophiles as sexually frustrated Catholic priests.

America has never been entirely comfortable with Catholicism. The election of a Catholic to the presidency in 1960 supposedly ended hundreds of years of social exclusion. But in the popular, largely Protestant imagination the Catholic Church remained foreign and threatening. The clergy sexual abuse scandal confirmed two popular prejudices about the Church. First, that its practice of celibacy encourages sexual deviancy.

To quote columnist Andrew Sullivan, “Celibacy is an onerous burden that can easily distort a person's psyche. Moreover, many sexually conflicted men gravitate to the priesthood precisely because it promises to put a straitjacket on their compulsions and confusions.” Second, the cover up of sexual abuse by the bishops suggests that the Church truly is a Popish conspiracy: an international intrigue that lives by its own laws.

But Sandusky’s arrest demonstrates that it doesn’t require the “suffocating” sexual pressure of holy orders to turn a man into a sexual deviant. On the contrary, it confirms what common sense already tells us: paedophiles are drawn to any institution that offers unfettered access to children. That’s the conclusion of this 2007 psychiatric study, which found that in roughly 70 percent of cases victims know their attackers and that assaults typically occur in situations of non-parental supervision (baby sitters, teachers, football coaches).

While the study claimed that a majority of paedophiles are either substance abusers or hooked on a simultaneous fetish (voyeurism, exhibitionism etc), they also tend to be of above average intelligence and target broken family units or particularly vulnerable children. In short, paedophiles are not the products of institutionalised behaviour. They are lone wolves. Certainly, paedophile activities are not limited to the American Catholic Church.

A recent report by the US Department of Education revealed that a child is more than 100 times more likely to be sexually abused by a public school teacher than by a priest. To quote: “a study by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded that 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.

In contrast, [it] extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.” Ergo, Sandusky’s activities are part of a wider story of criminal infiltration of our national institutions. Moreover, the way that Penn State handled Sandusky indicates that the Catholic Church’s culture of cronyism and incompetence is far from unique.

People within the university allegedly misappropriated records, lobbied to have the investigation quashed, ignored accusers and even turned a blind eye to witnessed abuse. Iconic head coach Joe Paterno, apparently, did not pass on information about Sandusky being caught in the act of raping a 10 year old boy in the showers. Who is guilty of what has yet to be resolved, but that Sandusky could go on preying on boys at the university (including after he had retired) points to a vile culture at work at Penn State.

University officials prioritised the reputation of their football team over the innocence of the kids in their care. Now that the twin evils of child abuse and conspiracy have been detected at the pinnacle of the sporting and educational establishments, it’s time to move on from crass stereotypes of paedophilia as a "priest problem". It is something that bedevils the whole of American society.

K. Coleman had hired Jay Nolan Community Services last year to provide in-home care for her son, Cameron. But after discovering what was happening to him when he was alone with the caregivers, Coleman is now suing the California-based company.

TORTURED - ABC NEWS - AUTISTIC KIDS ABUSED BY PURE EVIL
Publicerad den 22 jan 2013
WHAT HAS THIS WORLD COME TO?

AUTISM ABUSE - THIS SHOULD BE CRIMINAL!

Uppladdad den 25 jul 2009
Just because you have autism and have a meltdown dosent give teachers the right to beat you, force feed you vomit and ruin you for life. 

If this is the way we treat those who are handicapped we are condoning nothing less than a Hitler mentality that will destroy not only those with autism but our whole system of freedom.

Favorite, comment and send this video to everyone you know before its too late.

May God help us..

Teacher/Bully: How My Son Was Humiliated and Tormented by his Teacher and Aide

Autistic Adult's Medical Nightmare

Uppladdad den 14 jan 2011
WARNING: Disturbing footage: Autistic adult has behavioral crisis and ends up in hospital. While in hospital, he's given a dangerous anti-psychotic to control his self abuse. Name of drug given is Haldol, a toxic anti-psychotic that is contraindicated for the autistic brain, but ironically, often used in ER rooms to control autistic behaviors. Most autistic people have BAD reactions to anti-psychotics, especially if the autistic person has epilepsy! Anti-psychotics attack the autistic brain.

So what is alternative? Research shows medical marijuana has a QUICK ONSET, which is what you want during a behavioral meltdown. Anti-psychotics to control behavioral issues in autism is long outdated. It's time to find better, safer, brain friendly, humane alternatives. So far, I have heard there is NOTHING available in hospitals that can quickly stabilize an autistic person's severe behavioral meltdown during a crisis that don't carry severe side effects like seen in this video.

A great invention would be for a pharmaceutical company to create a FAST acting SPRAY of a medical marijuana strain extremely high in CBDs to immediately act upon brain receptors during the behavioral crisis. Strains high in CBDs don't make the autistic person "high." The goal is to CALM the autistic brain that is spinning out of control. Research shows MMJ high in CBD's does just this: Calms the body and brain. Now this seems a much more sane approach than injecting the autistic person with anti-psychotics like Haldol that send them into a body twisting, eye rolling NIGHTMARE.

More research please on safer more brain friendly drugs to help the autistic person during a behavioral crisis....I'm not a medical marijuana advocate, but I am certainly now more curious than ever how this drug could bring some real hope for families dealing with autism, epilepsy and autism with challenging behaviors. NOTE: One anti-psychotic that seems to be safe for autistic people is seroquel in low doses. IRONICALLY, seroquel does not come in an emergency rescue medication form. In essence, you can't give Seroquel IV (intravenous) or IM (intra muscular), it has to be by mouth, which has a long onset. 

The autistic person depicted in this video has THANK GOD never gotten Haldol again and is doing much better. Please be careful and make sure doctors do NOT give your autistic child (at any age) the drug Haldol. IT is one of the worst drugs for the autistic brain. Haldol may be good for other things, but it is NOT good for autism.

Uppladdad den 18 aug 2010
Court case of woman accused of hurting autistic girl continued....

A 9 year old girl was tortured and abused while riding a bus to school. 

Little Mary couldn't communicate what happened to her but the videos wouldn't lie.

The bus aide would instruct the bus driver to pick little Mary up first because "Mary would soil her pants during the long abusive ride during the mobile torture session."

What has America come to?

Please post your comments and subscribe to our channel in support of little Mary.

Autistic boy restrained for hours by school personnel
Uppladdad den 7 okt 2010
Malissa Denise Evans with her autistic son, Jeremiah, talks about how he was forcibly restrained by Anderson County school personnel for more than three hours at the Learn Center in September 2007, and the settlement she received that is being used to provide for his future.

Restraint & Seclusion - Deadly Restraints

Evil Caregivers: Michael Garritson and Matthew McDuffie Video


Publicerad den 29 jan 2013
"Matthew McDuffie" and "Michael Garritson", two sociopaths working in home health, both caught on tape in the same month, working different shifts, who were caught secretly abusing a defenseless non -verbal autistic man in their care. Pure evil. WARNING: Disturbing Images. Yes, it's horrific. Yes, it's so shocking you want to puke. But we can't pretend this isn't happening anymore. How many other disabled, vulnerable adults and elderly are being abused by MONSTERS like this? VIDEO surveillance should be mandatory in any home health or group home setting where NON VERBAL vulnerable reside.

Child with Asperger's abused by a middle school teacher.
Publicerad den 23 jun 2012
My daughter was abused by a school teacher, and she wanted to tell her story on You Tube, because to date there has been very little justice, the teacher and principal got wrote up and the whole school district had to take classes on how to properly restrain a child,in my opinion they should have lost their license and never been able to be around children ever again. My daughter suffers from Asperger's, Epilepsy, and now her counselor diagnosed her with PTSD due to trauma at school. Here is the link to back up what she is saying http://dpi.wi.gov/sped/complaints/com...

Autism and Human Rights: understanding and safeguarding the rights of people with Autism

Kin cite 'abuse and neglect' in institutional death of autistic Staten Islander

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A supervisor at a Staten Island mental health unit is being held criminally responsible for the December death of an agitated 27-year-old autistic man under his care — accused of putting the man in a fatal chokehold instead of restraining him properly. A grand jury has indicted Erik Stanley, 37, of Middletown, N.J., on charges of criminally negligent homicide and endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person in connection with the Dec. 4 death of Jawara Henry, 27.

Henry’s family said yesterday they were planning a civil suit, calling his death the tragic culmination of a pattern of abuse and neglect, and drawing parallels to the notoriously deplorable conditions at Willowbrook State School in the 1970s. "I am happy that somebody’s going to pay for my son’s death," said Sharon Rowe, during a press conference in the Manhattan office of the family’s attorney. "I was the type of mother who did a lot of looking out for my son — and it wasn’t enough."

Henry, a resident of a state-run Multiple Disabilities Unit at 777 Seaview Ave., was biting fellow patients and staff, according to prosecutors, and had bitten Stanley. That address is the home of the South Beach Community Campus, which houses a number of facilities that serve individuals with special needs, including the South Beach Psychiatric Center. Stanley restrained him by putting one arm behind his neck, another in front of his neck, forcing him flat on his stomach, and getting on top of him, a law enforcement source said.

The city medical examiner’s office ruled Henry’s death a homicide, determining he died of asphyxiation by neck and chest compression. Authorities conducted an eight-month investigation that included reviews of medical and forensic evidence and witness interviews, said Peter N. Spencer, a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan. That investigation concluded that "Stanley did not follow protocol nor use proper techniques while trying to restrain Henry."

Criminally negligent homicide is a class E felony, punishable by one and a third to four years in prison if Stanley is convicted at trial. Henry had been acting erratically and bitten two other patients when staff at the unit tried to calm him, an NYPD source familiar with the investigation said last year.
The staff then notified a doctor and requested medication for Henry, and three staff members tried to restrain him while they administered that medication, the source said.

The Multiple Disabilities Unit falls under the purview of the state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. Agency officials did not return a phone call seeking comment yesterday. State officials have described the Multiple Disabilities Unit as an intermediate-care facility that provides residential and intensive behavioral and psychiatric treatment for people diagnosed with both a mental illness and a developmental disability.

Stanley pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in state Supreme Court, St. George yesterday. Justice Robert J. Collini ordered him released on his own recognizance until his next court date Sept. 13.
Stanley’s lawyer, Matthew Santamauro, declined comment. Henry had reared in his Stapleton home since he was a year old, but was becoming too aggressive to handle, and went to the Multiple Disabilities Unit last year, family members told the Advance last year.

He visited home on Sundays, and his mother, said she became troubled when he started showing up with a variety of alleged injuries she claims caregivers explained away. "First there was a burn mark on his leg, and they told me that it was some type of skin thing, but to me it looked like a burn," Ms. Rowe said. "The next time, he came home with a chop over his forehead." At one point while speaking to reporters, Ms. Rowe became overcome with emotion and had to leave the room.

"Each time she expressed concern, they reassured her that he was in the best of hands," said attorney Gary J. Douglas. "There’s no question that this was systematic. ... It’s about an attitude of abuse and neglect, and a pervasive attitude of neglect. "There was a pattern of abuse with Jawara," Douglas said. Henry’s stepfather, Courtney Rowe, described him as nonverbal, and said he couldn’t express to family members how he had been injured.

The attorney likened the incident to the type of abuses uncovered at Willowbrook, an institution for the developmentally disabled, which were chronicled by Advance reporter Jane Curtin and journalist Geraldo Rivera.

1942 har 99,9 procent av Sveriges mönstrande värnpliktiga hål i tänderna. Stora hål. Ända in till pulpan. En lagning innebär två månaders sjukskrivning i värsta fall. Svenskarnas tandhälsa är usel. Och det kostar pengar att laga. Regeringen ber därför medicinalstyrelsen att utreda orsaken till karies och hur man bäst förebygger hål i tänderna. Det kommer att bli det största människoexperimentet i Sverige. Och svaret på frågorna kommer att innebära en kränkning av de mänskliga rättigheterna.

Den perfekta försöksstationen finner man i Lund, på Vipeholms sjukhus för svårskötta obildbara sinnesslöa. Här finns slutförvaring för de värst psykiskt sjuka och utvecklingsstörda i landet, och man har full koll på vad de äter. De redan rättslösa i Anstaltssverige bli försöksdjur. Under två års tid matar man patienterna med enorma mängder socker. Patienterna får äta kolor, socker och choklad under uppsyn, sponsrat av sötsaksindustrin, och resultatet blir förstås ännu fler hål i tänderna.
Upptäckten satte Sverige på den internationella forskningskartan, och resultatet blev lördagsgodis och färre hål i tänderna för den svenska befolkningen. Men det var vipeholmspatienterna som fick betala priset.

petrus skrev:Vipeholmsexperimenten

1942 har 99,9 procent av Sveriges mönstrande värnpliktiga hål i tänderna. Stora hål. Ända in till pulpan. En lagning innebär två månaders sjukskrivning i värsta fall. Svenskarnas tandhälsa är usel. Och det kostar pengar att laga. Regeringen ber därför medicinalstyrelsen att utreda orsaken till karies och hur man bäst förebygger hål i tänderna. Det kommer att bli det största människoexperimentet i Sverige. Och svaret på frågorna kommer att innebära en kränkning av de mänskliga rättigheterna.

Den perfekta försöksstationen finner man i Lund, på Vipeholms sjukhus för svårskötta obildbara sinnesslöa. Här finns slutförvaring för de värst psykiskt sjuka och utvecklingsstörda i landet, och man har full koll på vad de äter. De redan rättslösa i Anstaltssverige bli försöksdjur. Under två års tid matar man patienterna med enorma mängder socker. Patienterna får äta kolor, socker och choklad under uppsyn, sponsrat av sötsaksindustrin, och resultatet blir förstås ännu fler hål i tänderna.
Upptäckten satte Sverige på den internationella forskningskartan, och resultatet blev lördagsgodis och färre hål i tänderna för den svenska befolkningen. Men det var vipeholmspatienterna som fick betala priset.

http://t.sr.se/1hJmkt4


Moderator atoms - markerade citatet på ett korrekt sätt.

Raging The "Refrigerator Mother" Hypothesis of Autism

James R. Laidler, MD
Although it is hard to find the specific instance when the “refrigerator mother” hypothesis of autism was first used, it is not difficult to find who first proposed it. As early as his 1943 paper, Leo Kanner was calling attention to what he saw as a lack of parental warmth and attachment to their autistic children. In his 1949 paper, he attributed autism to a “genuine lack of maternal warmth” and the “Refrigerator Mother” theory of autism was born.

In retrospect, it would appear that Kanner was confusing cause and effect. It is more likely that any lack of attachment he saw between the parents and their autistic children was due to the lack of social reciprocity in the children. He consistently ignored the fact that the affected children in his 1943 paper had unaffected siblings who were, presumably, exposed to the same parents and their warmth or lack of it. In a 1960 Time Magazine interview, Kanner described the mothers of autistic children as “just happening to defrost enough to produce a child.”

As instrumental as Kanner was in forming the “Refrigerator Mother” hypothesis, it was Bruno Bettleheim who gave it widespread popularity. His articles, primarily in the 1950s and 1960s, popularized the idea that autism was caused by maternal coldness toward their children—ignoring, as Kanner did, that these same mothers had other children who were not autistic. This was, without a doubt, the low ebb of professional opinion about the parents (especially the mothers) of autistic children.

Despite a number of articles and books published during the 1950’s and 1960’s that blamed autism an a maternal lack of affection, there was a growing sense in the medical community that this did not explain autism as it was seen in the community. In 1964, Bernard Rimland, a psychologist with an autistic son, produced the book Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, which attacked the “Refrigerator Mother” hypothesis directly.

In what appears to be a direct response to Rimland’s book, Bettleheim wrote The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self, in which he compared the autistic child to a prisoner in a concentration camp (casting the parents as the SS guards). He states: The difference between the plight of prisoners in a concentration camp and the conditions which lead to autism and schizophrenia in children is, of course, that the child has never had a previous chance to develop much of a personality.

As it later turned out, Bettleheim’s book was one of the last gasps of the “refrigerator mother “ hypothesis. Although many other authors subsequently argued that is was valid to blame parents (especially the mother) for autism, it was a doomed cause. Although a few people, and even a few medical professionals, still blame autism on maternal lack of affection, the growing volume of data supporting a biological cause clearly refutes this. However, other potentially dangerous "blame-the-parent" notions have arisen.

According to these, parents are responsible for their children’s autism in two ways:
1. Causing the autism (through ignorance or willfully disregarding warnings) by allowing their child to receive routine vaccinations with products that contain thimerosal (a mercury-containing preservative) preservative or a combination measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines.
2. Allowing the autism to persist by not administering all of the therapies recommended by a burgeoning number of “experts” and healers. This is evidenced by repeated references to “the window of opportunity” in treating autism.

Many of the leaders in the autism recovery movement are very active in opposing any hypothesis (or, in fact, any research) of the genetic component of autism, fearing that it will undermine their assertion that all cases are caused by external, controllable (and, therefore, preventable or treatable) factors. Although it is probably not their intention, this has the effect of blaming the parents for their children’s autism.

This article was revised on September 15, 2004.

Hela filmen: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/re ... or_mothers

The Autistic's Holocaust

Uppladdad den 12 jun 2009
This is a film about how propaganda was used to kill autistic people. There is similar propaganda used today, except it is used to frighten and scare people about an autism "epidemic". Such propaganda causes stigmitization of autistics, the same way it did for autistics 70 years ago. However, today, there are no gas chambers or execution squads. Today, "our" repulsion of the disabled is manifested by organizations with the intention to help the "repulsive" to become less repulsive.

Would it be better to change the public Did you know that the Nazi's came after autistic people as well as other disabled people before the Jews? Did you know that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were perfected first on the disabled? Did you know that the disabled population in Germany was nearly wiped out? Why doesn't the public know this history? Every year that the holocaust is remembered, remember those that were the first to suffer from genocide. First they came for us, then they came for the Jews. How we treat disabled people is but a harbinger of how others will be treated.

Frimodig skrev:Men du skall inte försörja dig själv, det är poängen, right?

Man tar till vad man kommer över.

Frimodig

notwoodstock skrev:Jag blev lite nyfiken på alltihop. Jag har Asperger. Numera.

Och ett tips är att lägga in nytt stycke lite här och där i texterna, även det inte "var det". Jag och kanske andra har lite svårt att orka igenom så massiv text.

Nyfiken på fortsättningen. Och en kanske smärre sammanfattning, längst ner?!

/notwoodstock

Fick slut på saker att lägga upp nu så vi får komma fram till slutsatserna tillsammans