Indigo Jo's other blog

I saw a debate recently on Astrid's Journal which was provoked by a story about a young woman in Canada who was abused in a care home by two staff member. Harold Doherty called that an "autism reality" while Astrid (phoneutria_fera ) countered that it was really an "abuse reality" and that blaming the autism was kind of like blaming the victim.

To me, it's true that any situation which requires someone to accept care can lay them open to abuse, and this doesn't have to be a disability. The fact the victim cannot talk, or otherwise easily communicate what's happened to them, may be of help to the abuser but it's not necessary for abuse to happen. I witnessed and experienced (mostly physical) abuse at boarding school, which was ostensibly for kids with high academic ability with behavioural problems. The victims protested "that's assault" and that they had rights, but were laughed at in the face.

And nobody said anything - the first time the situation at my school came to light was in 1992 (after I'd been there for three years, and all this had been going on much longer than that) and even then, the investigation fizzled out. It was in nobody's interests to upset the apple-cart, except the kids' (or rather, some of them), and the kids weren't calling the shots, the adults were.

Autism is not the only disability, but why is it that some people involved in autism are so bitter and vehement about it? We don't often hear this from parents of kids with cerebral palsy - as far as I've ever seen - people saying that the condition is basically evil and has to be eradicated now.  I can understand why some people who are carers for very severely autistic people do not entirely see eye-to-eye with the high-functioning self-advocates, but their hatred for the condition itself is unusual and puzzling.