Compassion for mother who chained up autistic son? What?!?

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What?!?!, Not black and white?... I'm sorry but yes it is... You do not chain up anybody.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mother-accused-of-chaining-up-autistic-son-in-blacktown-was-desperate-20151110-gkvtq2.html

It seems to me that there are two competing perspectives in relation to this which will dominate commentary:

1) Abuse of minors is never ok - children and young people have an inherent right to live in a place of safety which respects their intrinsic needs for safety (safety in the sense including physical, emotional, sexual and psychological safety - the overall dignity of the person). Australia has ratified the UN Convention and as a country thus formally recognised its responsibilities to those of its citizens who are children/young people under the age of 18.

2) Abuse is never ok except when applied to "them" - any group of children who are othered.

My guess though is that it was neither of these, in this case; rather that the person who made that comment was scared of being called racist or "just prejudiced against immigrants", or... and tried to respond in a way that would deflect that possibility. It would have been better, I surmise, if the Australian press had sought comment from the NSW Commissioner for Children, (who is the person responsible for overseeing Australia's compliance and raising awareness with its UNCROC obligations regarding standards of care for children and young people). Autistic children are also covered by the UN treaty which addresses the care of the disabled; it's a pity that the spokesperson quoted completely ignored an opportunity to point this out to the general public. I really feel very uncomfortable with this kind of apologist statement, I think it encourages abusers and potential abusers to believe that they will be 'let off the hook' if they play the autism card. It's the equivalent of the other abuser hymnal, "the kid made me do it". It's really appalling that a body which probably receives public funding to advocate for autistic people behaves in the way it did.

I also see it as a very black & white way of dealing with things. Isn't there any way that a trained therapist can step in and help the family?

Sorry. That kid needs to me taken away from his mother and placed somewhere where he can be treated respectfully, not like a ravenous pitbull.

He probably has been. Australia's statutory child protection agency has to act within the guidelines which parliament has enacted, and they would have filed for an immediate custody order in situations like this - they have to. (And it would be granted in the first instance on an ex parte basis, in a case like this - because the only test which applies at this initial stage is the safety of the child/young person).

This is the way I am looking at it. The mother is from some third world area, possibly the Sudan. Life in areas like that can be both primitive and brutal. I just don't think she was equipped to know how to take care of the kid. It could even be that in her culture a kid with LFA/ID is viewed as being possessed by an evil spirit or whatever.

You don't chain anyone up against their will, and certainly not a child. Should she have access to resources from the state to help her with her autistic child, yes. But this in no way excuses her behaviour which I can't see ever being okay.

Okay, unpopular opinion bus- abuse is so normalized where I'm from that while a bit excessive this seems pretty tame as long as the kid didn't hurt him/herself too much.

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Yeah, I know it's a bit problematic... oh dear...

I posted this on my Facebook page. I have many acquaintances whose children are autistic. Not a single one of those pathetic excuses for parents commented on it. Because you see, they claim "they can't judge that parent because they know how hard it is". I'm about to unfriend every single one of them and get the heck out of this island. I don't want my son raised in a place where autism is seen as the most evil thing in the world, sick parents.

I kind of agree with this, as I see it around me. While in the US most people live in segregated areas based on income, it's not that way where I live. When I first moved here I lived in a very nice house and none of my neighbors treated their children with disrespect or beat them. This time I have lived in a couple of middle class apartments, but middle class based on the view here of middle class which is much lower than the view in the US and the things I have seen make my stomach turn. I have seen neighbor's kids beat up with a black eye and CPS doing nothing, as it seen as normal parenting . I know a teen whose mom posts that she beat her on Facebook and most mothers instead of telling her how disgusting she is tell her "I am so sorry you are going through such a rough time and are so stressed, I know it's hard". (By the way, the girls grandmother thinks the kid is possessed and the devil is behind all her actions )Yes, I am sickened, I have called CPS but nothing is done because sadly, for a majority of these people, that is a way of life. No, they have NOT evolved at all. They are still living like they did 60+ years ago here in many instances. I remember my mom telling me that her aunt would tie her cousin to the bed to avoid her escaping .

PS I am ready to move, I can't deal with the stress of seeing this around me anymore. I had no idea it existed anymore because originally I lived in a very well off area where the people HAD as a whole evolved and were much more educated...but knowing it exists, I just can't stand to see it anymore, much less do I want my son to end up marrying one of these girls who was raised that way and thinks it's ok.

The truly sad thing is that parents can hold dehumanising attitudes towards children without being consciously aware that they do - they are in denial, they rationalise (as the parents you defriended did), they justify; they objectify and stigmatise autistic children as an entire group, and the group may be in fact be more subject on a daily basis to dehumanising attitudes than any other group of school age children, as our Western cultures currently function.

It is not only autistic children though. There are many (sad) studies that demonstrate that 'ordinary' parents see nothing wrong with violence against children 'as long as the child is not physically injured'. Hello? The child's emotional and psychological injuries mean nothing to this very sizeable group; and as autistic children are accorded less value and worth than neuronormative children, generally, it is more of an open season on violence to them of all kinds, with less risk of penalty or sanctions. That is the tragic reality. That is what the activists who are trying to counter the relentless propaganda of Autism Speaks and similar organisations are up against - a tsunami of dehumanising ignorance and prejudice.

Violence to children occurs at an institutional level when governments allow parents to harm children as if they are entitled to do harm aimply because they are parents. New Zealand outlawed physical violence of any kind to children some time ago, and the sky hasn't fallen in - as the "Family First" organisations claimed it would; there have been very few convictions. Once parents and schools and adults generally got the message that physical violence would be treated as a criminal offence, they soon learned new ways of non-violent discipline. They would never have changed their abusive behaviour had toleration for their everyday abuse not been ended by statutory intervention.

Chaining up any human being is horrific; parents who don't think it is horrific, who "wouldn't want to judge" are reinforcing the right of parents to normalise abusive behaviour, and parties to the dehumanisation. End of story. Personally, I don't like to see any living creature chained up at any time; the sight of a herd animal like a goat chained up alone for the whole of its life is utterly tragic to me, and I cannot understand the mind of a human who sees nothing wrong with it, possibly such animal abusers think that being human adults gives them an automatic right to abuse other creatures, and many of them are probably parents who think they own their children and therefore have a right to treat them abusively too. Children are not chattels.

There is a small subsection of parents who are so challenged intellectually that they are incapable of distinguishing good and bad parenting decisions. The parent in New South Wales may be one of them. However that doesn't mean that abusive behaviour has to be tolerated in those situations; we can abhor the behaviour without also demonising parents who are incapable of safe parenting because of total ignorance or intellectual incapacity. A civilised society doesn't tolerate abuse of children full stop, nor pretend that it is ok "in some circumstances". It is never ok. Children are human beings too, with human needs, and primary needs are safety and protection. If the parent can't provide that, then other parents who look the other way or justify abuse are colluders in the abuse. Alas, their numbers are many...

Double standard again. "It is not an excuse but an explanation" mantra applies to everybody except the people who deal with autistics it seems.

Triple standard: she implies that anyone who disagrees with her opinion is not thinking in a grown up way, a privilege she accords to herself on the basis of having a subjective opinion on the topic.

What can one say when such people are spokespersons for autism awareness organisations? (We can say that the "barbarians are inside the gates"...)

I agree with that and really glad there was intervention. I'm just thinking it may have been done more out of ignorance than intentional cruelty. But regardless of intentions, it is still bad abuse. Poor guy, hope he's okay.

I see a couple of problems with this situation as being defined. Before anybody get's riled at me, I do not think any of the actions taken were warranted or proper by any means.

1) I agree that it may be ignorance. Also, when a person is faced with things that are really dangerous, something like this may seem mild to them. Also, having options is also tied up with cultural norms. What is horrendous by one culture's standards is perfectly normal within the confines of another.

2) Who says the mother is put together right? She may have deficiencies as well and this was all she could think of.

If course, again, I do not condone or make excuses. I just think that within the confines of reporting (and how many times have we seen stories like this exploited for either ratings or hyped to push an agenda?) in today's media, we don't really have real information or understanding.

Perhaps an unpopular view, but I think we'd need more information.

I think there can be explanations for abusive behaviour without demonising the person, in some cases.

In some cases, even many, you can change the behaviour of the parent through help and support rather than just writing them off.

That said, I don't support endless (or even very many) "slip ups" allowed - I think you can help the parent without necessarily returning the child to them. But the parent may go onto have more children and rather than a continuous cycle of letting the situation get dire, intervening when desvestating results have already occurred and letting the cycle repeat you can change things earlier.

Sometimes people do awful things but it is possible to move on from and the long term cost (financial and emotional) of only demonsing people far exceeds that of rehabilitation.