Alex Spourdalakis

[conuly]

He was murdered by his mother a month ago, but I'm just hearing about it now. Clearly I haven't been paying enough attention.

The same ninnies are advising us all not to judge her, after all, raising an autistic kid is so hard. To which I say the same as I always inevitably do: fuck it. The bare minimum of parenting (and let's face it, this is a pretty low bar) is that you don't kill your own child. Or at least, you don't do it on purpose. How much more basic can we get here?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/mother-murders-severely-autistic-son-cops-article-1.1371310

Comments

[redbird]

Orac discussed this at some length over at Respectful Insolence last month, including that it's not clear that the mother actually wanted or expected to kill herself, rather than to gain sympathy by making this look like "attempted murder/suicide" rather than "killed son rather than risk losing control over his life." That post has a bunch of back story the Daily News article doesn't. (I don't expect depth from the News, though, and Orac tends to loquacity.)

[conuly]

Thanks.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It's for the judge to judge her, actually, and it doesn't look like there's much reasonable doubt that it was premeditated murder. The law does not say that crime is less criminal when the person who commits it is distraught and in despair. No question, not killing one's own child is the bare minimum of good parenting, and obviously she 'should' have signed Alex over to the State if she couldn't meet that minimum.

However, the fact that she and her friend tried to kill themselves as well, and killed the cat so it wouldn't be sent to the pound, says everything that needs to be said about their mental state. It would have been a lot kinder and more just if whoever found them had not found them; if they'd died as they wished to die instead of being revived against their will and forced to live with their anguish in public for the rest of their lives. That's horrible.

[conuly]

If the commenters defending her were using that argument, they wouldn't be so annoying. "Clearly she wasn't totally in her right mind, she killed not just her son but her cat" is a lot more defensible than "you can't judge her unless you've narrowly avoided murdering your own disabled child".

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

i don't get the whole "You can't judge X" argument anyway. Clearly, people can judge, and do judge, and will judge whether or not other people judge them in turn for doing so. Anyone who's narrowly avoided killing their own disabled child, I would judge to be in need of immediate help, and I'd further judge the child to be in need of help, up to and including removal from the care of someone who considers murdering him or her.