Do you guys remember....

[conuly]

The same week Autism Speaks produced their god-awful "Autism Every Day" video two children were murdered by their parents, and for the life of me I can't remember either of their names.

There was the little girl whose mother ultimately went to prison after smothering her, and there was the teenage boy whose parents did not go to prison even though they locked him in his room and set the house on fire, and god damn it I don't remember their names. And then afterwards AS said some absolutely unforgiveable garbage, worse than what they'd already said in the video, because of course they did.

And now it's bugging me that I can't remember those names. I keep thinking and thinking, and I keep coming up with "Madeleine McCann", and of course I know she's somebody else. I even know who she is, naturally, so why I'm confusing her for them I just don't understand.

Comments

[topaz_eyes]

The little girl was Katie McCarron; her death is mentioned on the wikipedia page for "Autism Every Day."

Was the teenage boy Christopher DeGroot?

[conuly]

Yeah, I think so on both those counts, thanks. It was really bugging me. I actually think about them every year since it happened, but this year their names were just eluding me, and this was especially frustrating in Christopher DeGroot's case because it seems to me that he was largely forgotten compared to Katie McCarron. I don't want to do that too.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's good to remember.

I find the situation understandable, but all the more abhorrent for that. People trapped in a miserable situation will go to any extreme to escape it. When society heaps misery not only on people with disabilities or differences, but also on everyone around them, then the predictable result is broken people. Mental or physical illnesses, suicide, murder, rampage, etc. At some point they cease being able to behave rationally.

What outrages me is how deliberate and pervasive this is. I don't see it so much as an individual failing, but as something that society chooses to engineer on purpose because it deems some lives to be valueless and would very much like it if those lives could be somehow done away with and not have to get its own hands dirty.

Treatments exist, supports exist, tools and techniques can make most differences or disabilities bearable or even negligible in some cases ... but we're stuck with an abusive society that withholds resources, treats people abominably, and then whines about the results. Fixing that, making resources readily available to those who need them, would pretty much require dismantling most or all of the current predatory systems. I'd be okay with that, but it's a hard thing to do.

So we're left with reciting the names of the casualties. Or human sacrifices as it may be.

Re: Thoughts

[conuly]

I find the situation understandable, but all the more abhorrent for that. People trapped in a miserable situation will go to any extreme to escape it. When society heaps misery not only on people with disabilities or differences, but also on everyone around them, then the predictable result is broken people. Mental or physical illnesses, suicide, murder, rampage, etc. At some point they cease being able to behave rationally.

This was not the case with Karen McCarron. I doubt it was the case with the DeGroots either, but the McCarron family was very clear that they had ample help for Katie, with many relatives and multiple paid caregivers helping out, and apparently plenty of money as well. They thoroughly repudiated Katie's mother's attempt at trying this argument.

[sabotabby]

*rages*

[pauamma]

*growls*

[acelightning73]

The DeGroot boy's father was a police officer. The cop's girlfriend occasionally snuck food or blankets to the boy against the father's insistence. The boy had incontinence problems, and he was not allowed to use any of the bathrooms in the rather expensive house. When he pooped in his pants, his father would take him in the back yard, make him take his clothes off, and hose the child off with the garden hose, even in freezing cold weather. There is a particular mind-set in some adults, that the way to make children obey behavior rules is to punish the child physically for any transgression, by beating or inflicting burns on the kid, so he'll know not to excrete in unacceptable places. Teach the kid some DISCIPLINE. And the description of the child's life and death indicate that this was his father's motivation - make the kid BEHAVE. If he poops or pees in his clothes or inside the house, he must be punished to make him remember never to let it happen again.

I can't begin to imagine how someone can treat their own child like this.

[acelightning73]

There seems to be some concept that physical punishment and pain will make a kid conform to arbitrary behavioral rules. If he has no table manners, beat him - and make him eat out of a dog bowl on the floor. If he gets bad grades in school - beat him, take away his video game privileges. If he's incontinent, make him wear the dirty clothes to school, so the other kids will be mean to him. If he's disrespectful, beat him and then don't feed him.

When I was a kid, my older and bigger classmates (usually the boys) would ambush me as I walked home from school, and they'd hit me until I cried. When an adult asked them why they were picking on a girl like me, they said, "She's a weirdo. We have to beat the weirdness out of her." And what was so weird it provoked violence was the fact that I read books for fun, rather than because they were required by the teacher. And that was so unthinkably bizarre to these kids that they wanted to hurt me so much I'd stop acting weird.

[frandroid]

Goddamn this is so awful. :(((

[conuly]

The DeGroot boy's father was a police officer

Oh, is *that* why they got off scot-free? I thought it was just the autism thing, but now I know he's a cop....

[conuly]

I will say that the McCarron family didn't let anybody - including Karen, the girl's mother and murderer - pull that "oh, autism is so hard to deal with" line. The media started that up, and Karen sure tried it, and they smacked that right down.

[acelightning73]

That "disciplinarian" mind-set is common in cops, Marine Drill Instructors, and certain types of Christian fundamentalism. The more humiliating and painful the "discipline", the more effective they believe it will be. If a kid knows that that when he takes food out of the fridge without permission he's going to lose the privilege of eating for several days, he will stop stealing food - he gets MORE food when he follows the rules.

[acelightning73]

I was skipped a grade. I got put into an eighth-grade class right out of sixth grade, because it was the "advanced" track, and I had already absorbed everything school taught me up to that point. I was eleven years old. The older kids in my class were taking Bar Mitzvah classes after school, so they were all close to 13, and I was not a large nor physically strong girl-child. But they couldn't understand someone who didn't consider reading books a PUNISHMENT, imposed upon children to make them so unhappy they wouldn't disobey. For me it was a TREAT - the school books were Brussels sprouts, things like "Johnny Tremayne" and "A Tale of Two Cities", to the other students. To me the other books - Andre Norton and Heinlein juvies, every time I could get to the library - were ice cream and cake.

*sigh*

[griffen]

I'm not going to comment, beyond saying thank you for reminding us all that this happened.

Re: *sigh*

[acelightning73]

That is why I always support underdogs, because I've been one.

[acelightning73]

The girlfriend was sentenced to 25 to life in jail for murder (although she was an 'accessory', in legal terms). The kid's father, the real villain, got the same amount of time. He was the one who denied the kid food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials in order to "teach the brat some DISCIPLINE and OBEDIENCE"

[conuly]

No? I remember very clearly, and I looked it up after I got their names confirmed. They only served six months in jail.

https://autismmemorial.wordpress.com/2006/05/19/christopher-degroot/

[acelightning73]

The case on Long Island was a boy whose father forbad the child to use any of the bathrooms inside the fairly upscale house, nor to sleep in any of the beds. The boy had issues with toileting, and occasionally wet or soiled himself. His father would strip the child's clothes off, take him outside in the back yard, and hose him down, and not give him a towel to dry off with. He compelled the child to sleep in the garage, which was unheated, and to lie on the hard concrete floor with no cushion nor blanket. The outdoor temperature was 19 degrees Fahrenheit when the boy was sent back to bed in the garage. In the morning, he was dead of hypothermia - "froze to death". The child's school had been trying to get the appropriate local agency to step in, but the father wouldn't respond to the CPS workers. There was very obviously something really terribly wrong with the man.