Trigger warning: this includes murder, suicide, victim blaming, and sympathy for murderers of autistic children.
I will be using a Canadian story found here from a British Columbia online newspaper, this story is of a murder suicide committed by a woman against herself and her 16 year old autistic son.
The first thing I noticed was a picture that took me to a slide show of three pictures. The first said the mother had left a suicide note because she couldn't handle her "severely autistic" son.
The second said the son expressed communication frustrations in violent ways; it also claimed the mother was 100 pounds and added "single" in what I can only speculate is an attempt to show her even more sympathy.
The third claimed she asked for him to be placed for residential placement according to her family.
Already this story sets the tone. The murderer is the real victim. He was violent, out if control, "severely autistic" and she couldn't pawn him off into a harmful and abusive environment.
Already the story left a bad taste in my mouth.
When I began reading the article something stood out. Like usual the article restated captions from the included pictures but with more detail.
It described the murderer as "loving" and "shy" and painted a picture of a small fragile woman all alone, and throughout the article wrote about how she loved him.
Likewise it called him large, referred to him as "severely autistic" (by the way the article describes it "severely autistic" means non-verbal, mute, or non-speaking. Different people prefer different terms) and mentioned how one trail he and his mother went to was the "only place he could be calm".
By this point OBVIOUSLY the nice sweet loving young lady must have had a good reason to terminate not only her own life but her "profusely disabled son" as the article would have called him.
The article explains she was "too tired" to take him on the hike because had been "acting up".
The article goes on to make it clear he was large and violent. It blamed a violent episode for hospitalization that lead to being medically sedated (I'm not sure about Canadian law but US laws explicitly ban chemical restraints through OMNIBUS. I assume Canadian laws are similar and if not this is one area they could improve). The hospital gave a months supply "hundreds of pills" apparently for sedation.
Apparently instead of sedating the child he deserved to be overdosed until death, according to available evidence.
According to her family her note blamed not being able to just get rid of her teenage child (which causes intense mental anguish, pain, suffering, and regression) for being inconvenient, which obviously showed love, desperation, and a need for state sponsored harm to children.
Reportedly a relative, Ron Watson had said "we don't blame anyone", even though there was a note of confession and siting a need for "better resources".
The article ends in a quote about how well supported people just don't do this.
This is a worrisome trend in the reporting of autism related murder. Blame the victim and then claim that the murderer is a victim.
This is a trend we must reverse by calling out this bias and the harmful effects of it. I mean when murdering a disabled child is seen as reasonable of course "sweet and loving" people will viciously murder disabled people.
This has been highly emotional for me but I hope it helps shine a light on this awful issue.
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