From the article:
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And yet Deputy Dan was unrelenting. As the weeks went by and Jesse continued to stall, Daniel sent Jesse 60 text messages, hounding him to deliver on his promise to get marijuana. "He was pretty much stalking me," remembers Jesse. "With the begging for the drugs and everything, it was kind of a drag." Already anxious about his new home and new school, Jesse was conflicted. He knew he didn't really want to get marijuana for Daniel – not that he even knew how – and that the drug requests were ratcheting up his anxiety to an intolerable level. But Jesse also desperately wanted Daniel to like him and didn't want to fail his new friend. Daniel's oft-stated plight that his home life made him so unhappy that he needed to self-medicate struck a certain chord with Jesse, who also needed pharmaceuticals in order to function. "I take medication for my own issues," Jesse confessed to Daniel, rattling them off: Depakote, Lamictal, Clonazepam. Burdened by his sense of obligation, frightened and helpless, the pressure was too much for Jesse to handle. One day the turmoil had been so great that after art class, Jesse fled to the boys' bathroom and burned his arm with a lighter.
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But although Daniel was in a relationship, that didn't stop him from admiring other girls, like when, during one lunch period with a view into the dance room, Daniel exhorted about a 15-year-old in spandex, "Dang, look at the ass on that one!"
So I guess being an undercover officer makes this all OK? Either way, this is obvious entrapment. Was this undercover officer a pedophile, or was he just pretending to be attracted to obviously young girls?
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In an effort to stop the Temecula Valley Unified School District from expelling Jesse, the Snodgrasses appealed to the state's Office of Administrative Hearings. During a six-day hearing in February 2013, the school district dug in its heels on its right to expel Jesse for his crime, presenting a parade of witnesses – including members of Jesse's trusted school support team – to insist that despite Jesse's autism, the boy knew right from wrong, and therefore should have been able to resist the undercover cop's entreaties. The district's director of Child Welfare and Attendance, Michael Hubbard, who was one of only three district administrators with foreknowledge of the sting, further testified that his faith in Operation Glasshouse was so complete that he'd felt fine about Jesse's arrest. "I didn't believe it was coercion or entrapment for any of the kids," Hubbard testified.
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He was frightened to be back at Chaparral, where the other kids stared and counselors who'd testified against him now smiled at him, and where, to his parents' disbelief, the school district had filed an appeal of the administrative ruling – it was still fighting to expel him.
If it were up to me, and I had legal means, I'd have given those counselors every reason not to turn the corners of their lips up again, not for the rest of their pathetic lives. If anything, I'd say those counselors gave incomplete information to the court, not looking at the enormous pressure "Deputy Dan" had put on Jesse; maybe their professional societies ought to have a look at them.
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Stings like these can have a long-term impact on kids, sometimes in devastating ways. Research shows that juvenile arrests predict brushes with the law as adults. "These kinds of practices push students out of school and toward the criminal-justice system," says state director Lyman, noting that minority, special-needs and poor children are particularly at risk. "It's known as the school-to-prison pipeline."
This is a monstrous practice, inflicting severe damage on the lives of many a young person. Anyone in my book who still supports this practice after learning about it is someone to avoid, to shun, to condemn.
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Jesse's insights have made him wary of meeting new people, fearful of hidden motives, which, as he now knows, his disabilities make him powerless to detect.
This should help solve the mystery of why many autistic people come across as cynical, but no, no one is going to look at the practices of the larger society that keeps giving autistic people reason to be this way--it's just the autistic person's fault and they need to get over it (and expose themselves to danger) for the comfort of the larger society.
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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
03 Mar 2014, 6:15 pm
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