Mother Strangles Austistic Son

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Sorry but I've read way too many cases of parents murdering their autistic children and getting set free. Regardless of the situation, she still murdered him. She took all of her aggression out on him. I do think the more these stories pile up, the more society views autistics as just less than human and it's okay for parents to murder their children with autism.

She shouldn't just be let go. If this were not about autism, what kind of sentence would she have really received?

Last edited by TheygoMew on 02 Jul 2011, 2:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I feel for all of their children. The husband did contribute to this mess and she murdered her son. It is still murder no matter what the situation is. While I feel for her pain, I can't help but to think if her child was not autistic she would have not been set free.

But, if he wasn't autistic she would have probably not felt that he would be not taken care of after she killed herself, and probably not have killed him. Yes, it was murder, but unfortunately not as black and white as murder usually is. Wrong, yes. I still don't think she ought to be punished for all of the other mothers out their that we hear about who do murder their child out of pure selfishness. She didn't want him to suffer and was under extreme duress. The other ones we hear about just didn't get the kid they wanted. I'm guessing she has to at least check in with some sort of mental health facility or something. I'm not familiar with the laws there, but I would not see that as unreasonable, nor would I see some strict living conditions, such as parole uncalled for in this situation. We may never agree, but I don't see jail as a beneficial option for her or tax payers.

Why do people care so much about tax payers dollars in these situations? Keep a murderer on the street, take your hand out of my taxes! Can't you see the common theme is sympathy for murdering autistics?

Oh this case is different! The child was different! The child had autism! Nobody cares about what that child has to go through. You see it on TV too. These idiotic talk shows give sympathy for the parents only. These parents will say some mean things in front of their child as if that child is less than human and can't actually hear it! YES WE CAN! When I didn't speak, I could still hear and understand what was being said. Talk about some cruel words too!

This is a lack of justice. That child had no voice. She should know that when autistic children smile during duress, that smile doesn't mean they are HAPPY.

No more sympathy towards murdering parents. NONE.

Imagine. The story goes like this.

She lived with an abusive husband. She leaves the abusive husband and ends up homeless with one child. Her child was hungry and she didn't want him to suffer anymore. She strangled him with a belt.

Would you then be outraged if she went free? I don't suggest locking her up for life.
The message this is really sending is that autistics are less than human and you can get away with murdering them.

Especially if you state you don't want them to suffer anymore. I don't feel pity for the parents. I especially have grown very tired of this demonization in the media which aims to show autistic children as the worst children in the world and further fuels being treated badly and outcasted. It sends that message subconsciously that it's okay to torture us.

To the parents that understand yes it is stressful, yes you lose sleep, yes other adults can be mean to you over your child but you know your child isn't a demon from hell and you realize that those other people being mean are being bullies then good job. You are the ones who deserve a standing ovation.

If you murder your child and it's because your child is autistic, sit down. If you sympathise with all parents who murder their children for having autism and you have autistic children, that makes me question if perhaps you need to find someone else who will take care of your child because sympathising with a murderer in only these cases makes it appear that you yourself have had these thoughts.

These children don't always get the love either. The parents won't admit to this and if it's shown that the child was abused, rather than learn from abusing their autistic child they blame it on the child for having autism.

No more sympathy for the parents in these cases. No more sympathy for parents who refuse to quit focusing on THEIR wants, THEIR needs and just how THEY are suffering when they can't be bothered to understand just how their child must feel.

Maybe some parents could also use some sensitivity training...oh no but it's all the autistic child's fault because they lack empathy right? Well there's room for alot of people who aren't autistic. Where's the empathy they are supposed to have?

Well it does not seem like this was a case of the mom thinking 'oh my kid has a mental condition I should kill them to make my life easier.'

This brings up something another point and maybe people have heard of other cases for comparison.

Theygomew is right that society does come down a whole lot harder on mothers who kill non-disabled children. The idea being that raising non-disabled children does not push parents to the edge and therefore they did it out of selfishness (Susan Smith in the U.S., who wanted to be with her lover) or institutionalizable insanity (Andrea yates in the U.S., now and forever in a mental hospital). It has become a scary accepted truth that raising an autistic child pushes mentally unstable parents past the breaking point and they snap. There was also abuse from her husband but would that have been brought in if she had killed one of her NT children?

Earlier in the thread I brought up a case that happened in the U.S. many years ago of parents who abandoned their disabled son into the care of an emergency ward and accepted the charges of abandonment force him into government care. Earlier in the thread I said "charges of neglect" because I hadn't yet googled and was going by memory. Now I have googled and it was abandonment charges. Here is the case:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/04/us/pa ... -deal.html



I remember when this happened. There was almost no public sympathy for the parents. I remember talking about this case in real life and on line and defending the parents for throwing up their hands and giving up- my argument being that even if this wasn't a great thing to do, at least they turned him over to people who could care for him before they did something really tragic. He was considerably more disabled than this autstic boy. Coverage at the time described his disabilities and he really needed constant nursing care. There was a lot of anger at the parents and zero understanding. The general feel was that you cope with what you are given and you don't get to say "I can't". That the duty of a parent was never to say "I can't."

Given the outrage there was (and no understanding) about the abandonment of this disabled boy, I can't help but wonder if theygomew hasn't found an uncomfortable truth- that amongst all the disabilities out there, autism is the only one where parents are not expected to be able to cope or that it is understandable when death is chosen as being a less-worse option to being cared a ward of the state. If people had gone easy on the parents of that other disabled boy (who was very much alive and left in the care of those most equipped to deal with it) I would say, ojk, theygomew is totally wrong. But those parents of a severly disabled but non-autistic boy were crucified for abandoning him to government care while she is ...not given a pass exactly....but not as crucified as they were even though they did something not nearly as bad.

Usually when this comes up the issue raised is "why does society come down hard when a mother kills her NT kid but not when she kills her autistic kid?" I think it's worthwhile wondering how hard society comes down on parents who kill- for the same stated reasons- their disabled but not autistic kid. If this boy had Down's syndrome or cerebral palsy (like the kid in the story I brought up) requiring supervisory care, what would the response of society be? Only google knows.

She did not murder him. She committed manslaughter.

If the boy did not have autism, I reckon she would have received the same sentence.

There was a story a few weeks ago that concerned a mother who had killed her disabled daughter and then successfully killed herself because their lives were a living hell, they were constantly being attacked by gangs of youths and the government did nothing to stop it. Again, the emphasis was condoning the youths, not blaming the mother- sympathy should be with the two victims, mother and child.

These stories don't make people think "it's okay to kill a disabled child", they make them think "the abusive father/youths have made these people's lives a misery".

Quite frankly, making the mother out to be an aggressive monster rather than someone driven to desperate measures by her monster of a husband seems to be brushing away the wife beating (and presumably child beating).

I get the impression that people here aren't really aware of the history of how parents who murder their disabled children are treated both socially and legally.

Here is an example:

http://web.archive.org/web/200604071318 ... etail.html

http://www.4rkidssake.org/GA4133.htm

This woman was charged with murder for what was most likely forgetfulness. She most likely did not act with malice or hatred, she was most likely not any more overwhelmed by raising an infant than any other mother. She probably forgot she had failed to drop her child off before going to work. This is actually not as uncommon as I would hope:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 9030602446

But someone who deliberately starves her disabled (with cerebral palsy) daughter to death gets charged with manslaughter:

http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/ ... ab&k=47055

I'm not cherry picking stories. There are many stories like both of the above - the Washington Post discusses several.

Here's a blog post that discusses parents who murder their disabled children, focused on Canada:

http://www.phen.ab.ca/materials/het/het12-01c.asp

Getting into my opinions of the criminal justice system and how penitentiaries are handled is an entirely different issue, and I do not think prisons are really a viable solution. I am focusing here on the disparity between how TAB (temporarily able-bodied)/NT children are viewed in comparison to disabled children, when their parents kill them.

The Washington Post article also mentions multiple cases where the parent is not charged or is found not guilty, and there's no indication of the neurological makeup of the children as .

The Canadian article mentions a case where a farmer had served 15 years for "mercy killing" his daughter. That doesn't sound like them going soft on the parent of a disabled child.

Astrid Hueller ended up getting 6 years in prison for manslaughter in a plea bargain- she was charged with murder as well. Whilst I think murder shouldn't have been out the question as I think she probably intended to kill her daughter, I suppose there could be a clause in Canadian law about aggression or something, and the judge saw more evidence than we did.

The Canadian blog post mentions Tracy Latimer most predominantly. She had severe cerebal palsy, could barely move without crying out in pain, couldn't feed herself, and couldn't take painkillers because she was on anti-seizure medicine. It's not valid to compare her to an NT child left in a car- personally, I think leaving a child in a car (even accidentally) is worse than euthanising your child who has no hope of a decent life. A valid comparison would be an NT child who was allergic to painkillers and turned out to have severe Huntington's, MS and arthiritis at the same time. In Europe, most people in that situation book an appointment with Diginitas.

Find an example of two children in very similar circumstances, one with a disability you can live a fairly normal life with like AS (or even Downs), one NT, where the parents received drastically different sentences. Then you might have a case.

Again, do I think that killing ANY child is excusable, condonable, or otherwise okay under any circumstances? No.

Am I getting in line to high five Mrs. Freaney on her apparent (according to some of you) manipulation of the judicial system. No. Do I think she should go to jail. No. Hospital for awhile or life? Maybe.

Let free and clear to walk the streets as she pleases? No. She's not She's under supervision and is never allowed to be near a child alone again, ever.

Could she have given him to state (or whatever you call it in the UK)? No. The father would have gotten custody if she were to give it up. If he beat her and was proud to do so imagine what he would do to a vulnerable nonverbal autistic child. The others were all adults, except one boy with AS who I think is 15. I'm sure life isn't great for him living with his father, but he isn't as vulnerable as his brother would have been.

I also don't think that this case, or any case should be used by whiny NT mothers who want to prove to the government that they need more respite/help. This is a child's life we're talking about here, not a bartering tool. People are already doing that and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Bottom line is what she did was horrible, wrong and tragic. I won't say it wasn't. What I will say is that there are so many factors here at play that I can't feel it's okay to throw this woman in a cell forever. I also resent that implications by another poster in this thread that I have thought about killing my autistic children, as I have not ever had that thought. However, I am not mentally ill, nor being beaten to submission by my husband, or homeless. I understand how disabled children (not just autistic people either) are often seen as disposable due to the perceived burden they present their caregivers. I think that's very wrong. Autism being a special interest of mine for the last 5 yrs I have read all those stories and am aware of how this is a sad, but all to common occurrence. I guess, to me, I don't think anyone implied that Glen's life was not worth that of NT, but rather his mother was driven to do what she did out of desperation that was born out of way more than the boy's autism. I, however, won't argue that there are parents that play the sympathy card and get off easy in all sorts of cases, murder, abuse, ect...

I was almost willing to engage with you until you made this statement. Not anymore.



There are a large number of such examples and they are not difficult to find. They do not simply spring into existence when they are cited.

However, I don't really trust you at this point to read them honestly. As I've seen with the above cases, you consider some lives more valuable and worth living than others, and some people's deaths more worthy than others because of assumptions about their quality of life and needs. In that circumstance, I do not believe it is possible for us to have a respectful or fruitful exchange on this topic.

Last edited by Verdandi on 02 Jul 2011, 8:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So it's understandable that she snapped but it's not understandable that other mothers want to get help before they get to the point she did?

That judge in that trial is just as crazy as the mom...if not crazier. There are no words to describe how f**k'd up and wrong this is.

I'm going to be doing this for a while:

I would like to give advice to all mothers regardless of what kind of children they have: DO NOT RAISE CHILDREN THAT YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T HANDLE. It's not healthy for you and it's definitely not healthy for the kid to have you slowly fall apart and lose your head over them because of their existence. Children should not be treated as a burden and if that's all you can see them as such then you're only in for a whirl of hell that results in horridness such as this murder. I find too many parents of autistic children who are like this and I don't understand why they continue to punish both parties involved.

It's hard to get out of that without abandonment charges. Upthread I did more or less advocate that as a way to stop short of murder.

Not what I said, AT ALL. Getting help=good. Using autistic people's lives that have been taken away by their parents as examples as to why parents need help is not okay. It adds to the stigma that we are just burdens on society and not as important as non-disabled lives. There are other ways to advocate more help without adding to the stigma and further making autistics out to be less than. It fuels what the media calls 'mercy killing' because it seems that we are long suffering. No one should get to decide who has a life worth living as we can only know what we feel from our own POV. No doubt parents need more help and society should step up more, but we're not gonna achieve that by adding to the stigma of different=less than. I think, as I have already stated that this case *this thread is about* is about more than just autism, but a multi-layered mess of issues that when combined is hard to detangle.

I think the point I was trying to make is the child was killed against his will.