28 May 2014

What kind of people commit violent crimes?

Last week two of the most beloved and significant people in my life were victims of a violent crime. Their home was violated. It was a vicious physical and verbal attack. I shake with anger when I think of what two grown men did that night to people who are only ever kind, helpful, supportive and loving to their family and neighbours. It shakes you to the core when something like this invades your family. I want to do the impossible; turn back time and stop it from ever having happened. The people I love will recover from the physical assault. It will take longer for the psychological damage to repair. They have their family, friends and community around them giving support in any way they can. I can't express how grateful I am to these good people for what they are doing to help. I hope the police catch the perpetrators- they are dangerous men who ought to be locked up where they can't hurt people for criminal gain. I never use the word scum to describe humans but for them, it fits.

In the past few days, certain sectors of the media have claimed (with no evidence to back their assertion) that autism is linked to violent crime. No folk, it's not autistic people we need fear, it's abusers, scammers, bigots, zealots, entitled and over-privileged arseholes, thieves and thugs. They're the people who will do whatever it takes to gain what they want and to hell with the hurt and damage they cause other people, the people who really lack empathy. Autism is not a crime.


2 May 2014

Post for #BADD: Stop Excusing Murder

Trigger warning for discussion of child murder. Please call your emergency services or local crisis support number if you need immediate and urgent help.

Samaritans UK 08457 909090
Samaritans Ireland 116 123


This is a post for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014.



Disablism means discriminating against people due to their disability. It's unjust and unfair. Disablist attitudes abound in our society and worsened in the past few years as a result of robust campaigning by certain political parties and media outlets depicting disabled people as lazy, scrounging cheats.

Disabled lives are accorded less value than the lives of people not currently disabled. This even applies to children. I've been appalled over the years by the steady stream of news stories about parents killing or attempting to kill their disabled children. And each time the tragedy of a life lost is portrayed as understandable because, after all, the dead disabled person was such a burden. The parent who killed the child is described as devoted, loving and most of all, long-suffering.

Last week it happened again. In England, 4 year-old Olivia Clarence and her 3 year-old twin brothers, Max and Ben were found dead in their home and their mother Tania has been charged with their murder. The 3 young children were killed while their father was abroad with their older sister.

I first read about this awful crime via an article in The Independent with a headline describing the woman subsequently accused of murder as a "devoted mother". On social media outlets, people rushed to defend and explain Tania Clarence's actions. The justification as far as they are concerned, is that the dead children all had type II spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic condition that can cause fatal respiratory problems and shorten life expectancy. This is just a small selection of tweets about the case. Try to imagine how they would read if the murdered children did not have a medical condition or disability:




Especially vile was the follwing tweet from a South African MP:



I and many others retweeted this with criticism which caused her to think again about what she had written. A few days after posting it she deleted the tweet and apologised for having offended people saying she didn't mean it and that she's a nice person. I'm glad she apologised but that doesn't make up for an MP thinking it was correct to share that awful opinion in the first place.

There's a Mumsent thread in which the mother accused of murder is accorded nothing but pity with posts on the "terrible" and "intolerable" burden she had faced, and in which she's referred to as a  "Poor, poor lady...hope she's getting the support she needs."

On a post on Irish site The Journal some are attempting to justify the murder of 3 children aged 3 and 4 years old with comments such as, "The children all had genetic life limited conditions . Maybe she wanted to end their suffering. No one knows what it is like to watch your children dying." and "Unless you can walk in the shoes of a mum with a sick child, let alone three sick children, you cannot possibly judge her actions."

I do not need to walk in anyone's shoes to know that murder is wrong. These children had their most basic human right taken from them. What happened to them is cruel and despicable. It is no less wrong than if they were typically developing little kids. When people explain the murder of disabled children as resulting from caregiver burnout or limited service provision, they are putting blame on the victim. Many if not most crimes are committed by people in desperate situations and those criminals don't have countless supporters asking us "to walk in their shoes" and "not to judge". As Paula C. Durbin-Westby wrote (on the all too frequent murder of autistic children by their caregivers),
"No one finds it necessary to defend people who murder because they are poor, stoned, broke, or in other difficult situations. And they certainly don't blame the victim. And they don't ask you to walk in the murderer's shoes. And they don't tell you to shut up if you won't."

So I will continue to judge and to work towards a society in which disabled people are respected not treated as burdens and disability is recognised as part of the human spectrum of experience.