Aspies--Still Vulnerable to Abuse

Cruel, deranged abuser, Lauren Bush...may she rot in prison.

When it comes to abuse of autistic people, one could say 2014 is shaping up to be a banner year. Just this week two teen age girls in Maryland (ages 15 and 17) were arrested for what can only be described as heinous acts against a 16 year-old boy with autism. Lauren Bush, the 17 year-old) is being charged as an adult and I can only hope this means she will spend enough years in prison to prevent her from being able to procreate.

These girls give psychopaths a bad name...

This two teens tortured the autistic boy with a knife, kicked him in the groin, pulled him around by his hair and made him walk across a frozen pond and refused to help him to get out of the freezing water when he fell in several times.  Most shocking, however, was that they forced him to masturbate and then copulate with the family pet.

Like many other sadistic bullies, these brainiacs saw fit to record themselves engaging in these despicable acts so there is no doubt of their guilt. 

Some people so enjoy brutalizing others, they like to film it to watch over again...

The boy in this case—the victim--believes himself to be friends with these monsters. Contacted by The Washington Post, his mother reports, “He doesn’t appear to be traumatized. He thinks these girls are his friends and is surprised the police are involved.”  

 

The boy has been identified as autistic, and of course there is a large range of functionality on the autism spectrum. I am assuming he has Asperger’s, based on reading he has a driver’s permit.  Although Aspies can excel academically, they frequently have crippling social impairments, as appears to be the case with this boy. That the boy thought these girls were his friends speaks volumes about the lack of understanding of appropriate social behavior many autistics experience. 

An individual with Asperger’s can be very high-functioning—in some cases their intellectual gifts allow them to compensate for their social deficits and appear “normal”, perhaps memorizing appropriate social responses. The boy in this case was said have gotten good grades and functioned well enough that he was trusted by his mother to make his way to and from school on his own. 

High-funtioning Aspies can appear "normal"

An appearance of “normalcy”—or perhaps even superior academic performance on this boy’s part concerns me because the lack of understanding of autism by the greater community, i.e., a jury, coupled with a slick-talking lawyer could result in these psychopaths getting merely a slap on the wrist, believing the boy was somehow a willing participant in these sick games.  

After the girls were arrested, the boy’s mother asked for his assurance he would stay away from these girls. His response, “I don’t know.”

I’ve always thought non-verbal children like Ryan were the only ones at risk. Now I know better.