Autistic boy ensnared in VA foster care system

Post Reply New Topic

I am writing a book about my autistic nephew's nightmare in Virginia's foster care system. I'm not sure when I will finish or if anyone will publish it, but I'm convinced that it's an incredible story that deserves to be told.

I tend to be verbose, so I thought it would be an interesting and useful challenge to summarize my nephew's story with Twitter. If nothing else, it will force me to write something concise. You're welcome to follow my project (Twitter username is JimmysStory).

I plan to post only one tweet per day, so it's not a big commitment to keep up. A Twitter account isn't even necessary, but existing Twitter users would help me keep track of interest by officially "following" me. At any rate I hope you will take a minute to have a look.

Judge_Roy is following you. Also, very sorry to hear what happened to your nephew.
For a minute I thought VA was Vancouver because of the situation with Ayn, a 10 year old Canadian girl with autism who was taken by protective child services for no reason except to 'lighten the load' for her father, and now she's been away from her family for almost 300 days and been on anti-psychotic medication.

It's horrible what the services that should be helping these children do.

Can I have a breif summary of the thing up front?

Ganondox, I generally want to avoid spoilers, but what happened to Ayn (see Judge_Roy's post above) is similar to my nephew Jimmy's story. I hope you'll check it out.

Here are the five tweets I posted so far.

Mar 24 - This twitter account was created to generate interest in a book I'm writing about my autistic nephew Jimmy.

Mar 25 - Someone once told me, "There must be a special place in hell for those who neglect vulnerable children in their care."

Mar 26 - I call my book A Special Place in Hell.

Mar 27 - The book begins on 9/29/2006 in Tappahannock, VA. Jimmy had been living with his foster mother Kerry for over 12 years.

Mar 28 - Police, social workers, and animal control showed up at school on morning of 9/29/2006 and took Jimmy from everything he knew and loved.

Note: tweets will be in reverse order on Twitter (most recent first).