Complicit Narratives

tw: child abuse, ableism, abuse against autistic people, murder mention



“Coping with adult children’s autism, parents may face ‘least bad’ decisions,” an article for the Washington Post is headlined. It offers “reflections” on the case where two autistic twins were locked in a dank, barren basement. The headline says it all. “Least bad decisions” while locking kids in basements.

This justification - the justification to the abuse and neglect of autistic people - cannot occur any more. There cannot be anymore cries of things heard in the article:

“But it’s possible that, in their minds, this was the least bad way to deal with this,” Bucknam says.

And this, and the Washington Post’s article, just cement that, as Ari Ne'eman of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network writes, “there is no crime so depraved that the autism parent community will not defend it, if… committed by a parent against an autistic child.”

But they are still wrong, if they consider that the “least bad way.” What would be the worst choice? Murder? So locking them in a basement seems okay by comparison? The answer is still no, it is not okay.

We’re human. A lack of services does not translate to abuse or murder for thousands of other families who have people in those families with disability, significant or otherwise. I will not deny the inadequate services across the country, but as Julia Bascom (also of ASAN and the Loud Hands Project) writes, “don’t hold those conversations, those desperately needed conversations, in connection to crimes like these. When you do that, you hold us hostage. When you do that, you say "give us more funding–or the kid gets it!”

The time for those discussions is somewhere else, sometime else when we – the disabled – haven’t just been abused or murdered. The topic at hand is not more services, but on the fact that we are human and that alone should dignify respect and human rights. The topic at hand is that this cannot happen anymore. I know I will write more posts like this, because it will happen again, regardless of my and thousands of others’ insistence that it cannot. These types of statistics, where people with disabilities become crime numbers, need to hit zero, and we will not rest in our fight to get to that number.

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The Washington Post is doing people with disabilities a disservice – more than that, it is complicit in constructing a narrative that allows our abuse and murder. Write to them Here to tell them that these narratives are not okay. And for anyone reading – as Julia Bascom wrote in the same post, “Please don’t inadvertently help build a narrative where hurting someone with a significant disability is ever, ever “understandable.”