Dick Sobsey On "Murder and Social Endorsement" of Parents Killing Their Children With Disabilities
Dick Sosey is an American professor who teaches at the University of Alberta, Canada, and is an expert on issue of discrimination against people with disabilities. In response to a story published in the Denver Post about the murder of a boy with autism by his father, which Sobsey perceived to be unduly sympathetic to the killer, he has posted two blog posts that are well worth reading in full. In Part One, he writes:
Murder is wrong and there is no good excuse for it. Murdering any child is a despicable act.Murdering one’s own child is as bad as murdering someone else’s.Murdering a child with autism is just as bad as murdering any other child.Sobsey continues his analysis in Part 2, which I will permit you all to read on your own. He concludes:
Most people who murder other people are experiencing stress and significant challenges in their lives of one kind or another. Being stressed is not an excuse for murder.
I am particularly incensed at people who commit murder and then tell us how much they love the victim that they murder. Suggesting that parenting a child with a disability is so challenging or stressful that killing these children is somehow understandable or excusable is no better than endorsing any other kind of murder.
Suggesting that parenting a child with a disability is so challenging or stressful that killing these children is somehow understandable or excusable adds to the probability that other parents will kill their children, because sick minds struggling with the impulse to kill can be assisted to go over the edge by social endorsements, which help them to rationalize murder...Let's save our respect and empathy for the parents who go on facing challenges day after day, and recognize the child murderers who fail to face these challenges for who they are. Parents who kill children with autism are no better or worse than parents who kill any other child.
Lastly, I want to comment on why I believe the ideas in this article are dangerous. To understand child murder, it is less helpful to focus on what motivates some parents to kill their children but rather on what stops most parents from killing their children. This is not being glib. The reality is that raising any child is a lot of work, stressful at sometimes, and heartbreaking at others. At times even the sweetest child is an intrusion on our lives. However, most parents do not kill their children for some combination of four reasons: (1) Love and attachment, (2) Guilt, (3) Shame, and (4) Fear of Punishment. In most cases, this is the order of importance. Parents who claim to love their children but hate their autism are at best conflicted. Autism is a pervasive disorder, saying you love the child but hate his or her autism is a bit like saying I love you but hate everything about you or saying I love the child I wish you could be, not the child you are.Sobsey probably knows more about this particular issue--the murder of children with disabilities and society's reaction to it--than anybody I know. His wisdom is very worth pondering.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:19 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
"He yelled at his wife, 'I had to kill him because you were ruining him,' before shooting him several more times, according to the arrest affidavit."
This sounds like mental illness to me.
But I note that the mother attended an autism support group, along with other women, and the father (and presumably the other fathers) never did. I've seen women complain that their husbands are too harsh on the kids, or don't understand their sensitivities, or whatever. Sometimes, no doubt, Mom is being too easy on the kids. Sometimes, I suspect, the kid really is sensitive and needs Mom to understand him so his life isn't hell, and Dad to push him to step out of his comfort zone and get over it. And sometimes Mom is totally right and Dad is in denial or just can't deal with having an imperfect kid. Is it the usual thing that Mom grapples head-on with the problem and Dad can't/won't/doesn't see the need to?
I think there's an idea today that people are supposed to have more control of their reproduction than is really reasonable. We've asked before in comments here what happens when parents do prenatal testing to assure themselves that their babies have no defects b/c they couldn't deal with that and would abort if they did, and then those kids turn out to have un-prenatally diagnosed problems after all. Isn't this just the logical extension of aborting a kid with DS?
This is depressing. Worse yet, I started to read the story you linked and discovered the Autism in question is Asperger's Syndrome. On some level I think that makes it worse. Killing kids with disabilities is never excusable or right, but my wife teaches (and i've met some of the students) kids with Asperger's and it is quite a mild form of Autism. It makes the child a bit socially awkward and generally has the upside of making them quite studious and focused. My wife teaches at a school for "gifted and talented" students.
Does that make it worse ? No, it is still a horribly evil crime and the perpetrator should be executed for this deed.
I just wanted to note that as types of Autism go, Asperger's is quite mild and had not even been understood properly till recently with it usually going undiagnosed and the person just being regarded as a bit weird. Asperger's isn't the type of Autism you think about when you normally here the word.
Many also have sympathy for moms who kill their newborn children and commit infanticide. (I don't think men get the same sympathy.) I was testifying on a safe havens bill several years ago and was dumbfounded for the sympathy of women who had thrown their newborns in Las Vegas trash dumpsters. I don't get it.
Thanks to the Professor Sobsey for being so straight forward, honest and calling it as he sees them. I'm sick from the eloquence of those who describe these murders in such a sympathetic manner for the murderer. We need more of Professor Sobsey's kind of straight forwardness.
I actually have a disorder quite similar to Asberger's Syndrome, called Nonverbal Learning Disorder. it basically has the same symptoms plus or minus various features. There is disagreement among professionals about whether NVLD is on the autism sprectrum as well. I'm surprised that the article said "autism" first, as that usually evokes classic Kanner's autism. As Jason writes, it doesn't make the killing any different, but it's scary to think of people using incidents like this to argue for prenatal testing for something as comparatively mild as Asberger's syndrome. The whole thing is awful.
I've got one nephew who has classic Kanner's autism, and one who has PDD. The older boy is 15 and cannot talk. He lives in a group home because his father flaked out and left his mother, and my nephew was too big physically for my sister to handle all alone (he's almost as tall as she is, and she's 5'11", but he's got more muscle tone). The younger boy freaks out if you disrupt his pattern of behavior. He once threw a fit at me because I made his peanut butter and jelly sandwich by putting the jelly on the bread with a spoon instead of a knife.
I love them both very dearly. I hate having to deal with their autism because the older boy is physically dangerous to himself and to others, and the younger boy is a tyrant if you don't follow "the rules."
But I would fight with my dying breath to keep them alive and healthy and give them any chance for happiness. They're precious as they are, and even if they drive us crazy sometimes, so what? My sister had to put the older boy in a home; that doesn't mean we don't love him as much as his brother, and that doesn't mean we think we're better off without him. It was a hellish sacrifice my sister made, to give up her firstborn and precious son, to ensure he got a good education and had someone around who could give him the constant care he needs. She couldn't stop working, and she won't move down here to Texas (we live here, she's in NJ).
No child deserves to be murdered for ANY reason.
I read both essays and I also have been commenting over at the Post article discussion board. What is fascinating is that the first 100 comments were almost all a discussion of whether or not autistic kids should be in the classroom, and their care/education/whatever should be paid for by taxes. (which predicatbly devolved into a lot of liberal/conservative name-calling).
Anyway, commenting and reading the extremely well-thought-out writing by Sobsey, as well as some other posts over at NDY, have gotten me thinking about the way that people are using compassionate thoughts and ideas to excuse, or make light of, inhumanity. It is becoming a more common kind of mental exercise, which I used to see in my high school students, and now I realize is widespread.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home