Police: Autistic Boy Lived In Filth, Ate Only Chocolate

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Can you make a distinction between an explanation and an apology? Between exploring why something might be that way and justifying/excusing it?

The OP asked "How can people live this way?". I suggested an explanation. Where is the championing going on in that? I was literally trying to understand how and why people might live like that.

And I repeat the house is not as bad as some I've seen, and/or lived in.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 May 2008, 10:36 am, edited 2 times in total.

I don't know the OP's mind, but it sounds likes a rhetorical question and not one needing an answer.

On wp?!

You really don't know much about humans.

Assuming, they really lived under "sub-human" circumstances:
You think that mother wanted to? Enjoyed it or what? She simply was not able to see any way out of it and YOU should be ashamed to trample on a weak soul for being not as perfect as you wish her.
I can't say that from this text, but maybe she loved this child as any other parent, maybe even more.

And I'm challenging the veracity, because I've learned to use my eyes and my brain and know a bit about the media industry. Watch that video and keep your eyes on the corners of the picture where you can see a rather clean floor sometimes, when that camera guy wasn't able to hide everything.

I can understand how & why this might have happened, but nothing will lesen my outrage and disgust. There are worse things, messier houses with plumper, juicer maggots, oh sure. Houses with more mould, more insects, more congealings and spoilt food. I do not dout that is true.

But does this mean it's all okay? Simply because some houses are worse?

Why can't every house in the country be allowed to go to seed, if that is your logic?

It occurs to me that maybe what we're arguing about is what we think the story is about.

I suppose that I am thinking that the story is as much about the dire results of a population of AS/other disability/mentally ill adults never diagnosed, ( or who were misdiagnosed, or diagnosed and then abandoned on their reaching adulthood) , as about the child in isolation. This is about two people in trouble. ( if they really are, other than in suffering interference by the police) )

People who have difficulty keeping themselves clean, getting dressed, or eating enough/properly, who are struggling to claim benefit or work 20 hours a week to keep going, who find themselves parents, and sink even further into passive behaviour, and reactions to events based on severely limited short-term understanding of consequences.

I am not convinced, on the basis of this article anyway, that this boy suffered such awful abuse. The son of someone I knew had rotten teeth as a toddler , despite supposedly normal diet. I read on wp about people eating take-outs, biscuits and salty snacks, day after day, and little or nothing else. I have read about what many parents ( not on wp) feed their children, and see it in the supermarket trolleys and it isn't much better. Chips and white bread and sweeties, with lots of hydrogenated fats etc.

And about the maintenance/state of the house it sounds to me as if the landlord was seriously at fault/irresponsible in not providing plumbing, in not repairing windows, in not arranging for correct garbage disposal, etc.

Last edited by ouinon on 21 May 2008, 1:02 pm, edited 3 times in total.

You're right. It's all good. Let's encourage other families to do the same, hopefully with more credible media results.

Thank you!! !

There is absolutely no excuse to be living like that, autistic or not. And besides, we don't even know if the woman is even on the spectrum. There's no excuse. And how would you feel if you had to live near trash like that? (I don't mean the people, I mean their living conditions.) I live right in central Indiana and there's already enough of this crap uglying up the towns. Now what if you lived in one of the few nice parts, but you know you won't be able to get all your money back on the house because all of this around you is lowering the property values? That's what's going on for my mom and I. But that's another story entirly. My point is, there is no excuse to be living like that. And why didn't she take proper care of her son to begin with? What's wrong with taking him to a doctor or sending him to school? She's only hurting him for the rest of his life...

I'm, one could say, a "hick from the sticks" and squalor like this was not uncommon in the little rural town I grew up in, especially among people living in or near poverty. It is a big reason why my parents drilled the need to clean in my head. I am constantly disgusted how filthy the homes of a lot of people my age are. IMO people really don't learn how to do proper housecleaning from their parents anymore.

Even in poverty, you can still keep your home clean.

Agreed. Like I said, there's no excuse.

No excuse, but many causes. If there was a beer can around we would have heard of it.

A woman of 40 has a child, autistic, and alone raises him. She is not said to be a welfare queen, nothing is said of that, for if she was, the child would have been through all the childhood shots, and there was no medical and educational intervention. So somehow she got by, the working poor.

So she lives as best she can with no help, she was staying in an unused house, having to chose food over rent.

Christian Scientists do not send their children to doctors, and are legally respected for it. Anyone can home school their child.

So someone reports her to Childrens Services, she does not let strangers in, so they send in the army to break down the door and throw everyone in jail.

This will cost many thousands of dollars, the boy will most likely be locked up for life, as there are no services, she is in jail, for she asked permission to stay in an abandoned house.

The homeless, of which there are many, and a lot more soon, do not qualify for food stamps because they do not have an address, two forms of current ID, and reciepts for utilities, rent, and more. People do not qualify as a resident till they have been there for a month, and maybe some $40,000 a year social worker will grant them food stamps, if they can meet all the requirments, and maybe not.

We don't want them kind around here.

There is a whole lot of them kind in the country, and about to be a lot more as many of the claimed middle class are a few house payments from being homeless. Last month one in 500 homes was forclosed, just in one month, and it is said it will get a lot worse. That rate is one in forty this year.

That will affect property values. With a two year backlog of unsold homes, prices down by half in some markets, everything most people have, their home, the bottom is falling out. The majority now seem to owe more than the home is worth.

Realtors and home builders are the new food stamp class. No work and all their assets in real estate. New never lived in houses are being forclosed.

The bottom is falling out because we did not take care of the bottom.

Children's services was not coming to offer a publically owned apartment, plain but decent, food stamps, educational assistance for the boy, day care, job training and employment help for the mother.

We spend more on prisons than on schools. Everyone wants education, but it is being rationed to those who can pay. Like medical services. Those people are being driven into ignorance and poverty, then blamed for it. We cannot spend on public health, food, housing, schools, because all that money is going to a police state, and prisons, for people who do not have health care, education, food, housing.

You reap what you sow.

The working class is becoming the new poor, and they were the tax base. The last of the employed must now pay for the system. That is the last stage of class warfare, it's the Blacks, caught the poor white, it's the poor, caught the middle class, but none of them were a threat to the rich. The real target was the upper middle class, who did pose a threat of taking over.

Now they live in a world of people they made homeless, poor, alienated, owe more than it is worth on their McMansion, and have to pay the taxes to support Haliburton living with the other Oil Shieks, keeping a State army to keep the poor in and out of prison, and for the cost of stealing the Iraqi oil fields for the rich to get richer. They are no longer a danger to the rich.

The People are One, we rise or fall together.

I did see a Votive candle in the video.

Homeschooling is a risky venture. The kid's development is compromised in order to shield him from bullies or whatever.

How can you ever learn critcal thinking if your only teacher is Mommy?

By the time the kid grows up and is ready to enter the workforce, how much wil he know about the world? Not very much.

I'm not saying it cannot ever succeed, but why would it be worth all the trouble?

there are always exceptions. if your local school is run down, gang violence is rampant as well as streets, would you feel comfortable having your child attend such a place?

Of course not. I'd put in him in another school. Schools are set up to educate kids, despite what you may have heard. What if I am not a stay-at-home parent? What if I have a full-time job to go to?