Back on Thursday, I mentioned a ghastly story out of Maryland, where two girls stand accused of bullying and torturing an autistic classmate over a four-month period. The worst of it was making him walk out on a frozen pond and not helping him when he fell in. They stand charged with a number of crimes, but they should count themselves really lucky they're not facing charges of manslaughter or murder. This story really resonated with me, partly because I was a first-hand witness to someone taking advantage of an autistic person.
Many longtime readers know that for three years, I was married to an emotionally abusive and controlling woman. She was the mother of four kids--the oldest of whom briefly moved in with us after he turned 18. He, another brother and a sister had been taken from his mom in 1998 after their aunt killed their younger brother. He'd been diagnosed as autistic at a pretty young age. However, he forgot to get his anger-management meds refilled before coming east from California--and as a result, threatened me constantly that he'd "knock my ass out" if he didn't feel I was treating his mom right. As many of you know, he made good on those threats on the day I finally left her--and when I pressed charges against him for beating me up, she retaliated by filing false charges that I made a girl staying with us watch X-rated movies and threatened to beat her up if she didn't tell anyone about it. However, someone must have told her that she'd be staring down the barrel of charges of perjury and subornation of perjury, because she never showed up for court.
When I saw the list of charges, I was gobsmacked to discover that he was listed as a witness against me. From what I knew about autism, I knew this was a potential red flag--after all, the chances were pretty good that he didn't understand that he was being manipulated into lying under oath. I initially wondered if she'd deliberately failed to make sure his meds were refilled as well. But even if she didn't do so, manipulating an autistic person into lying under oath is still pretty depraved.
Those questions became even louder when I learned via the papers from her first marriage that her first husband had seen her hitting her son in the head out of anger. She never even filed a response--even though it's something no normal parent would allow to go unanswered. I later found out that his aunts and uncles had tried to talk him out of moving in with his mom because they knew what she was like. However, since he was 18, there was legally nothing they could do. According to a Washington Post piece on the Maryland case, the boy doesn't comprehend what those two girls did to him due to his limited social skills. Even money says that the conversations between my ex's son and his relatives were similar.
Now here's where things really get hideous. While the circumstantial evidence screams in capital letters that my ex manipulated her son, I was never able to get any definitive proof. Had I gotten that proof, I would have had no qualms about suing her to recover the legal expense incurred as a result of her filing those false charges, as well as damages for pain and suffering. Many of you know that for a time, my ex was homeless--and I knew that while I had an airtight case based on the facts, it would have been nearly impossible to overcome the moral objections that would have been raised to suing a homeless woman. But if I'd been able to get proof she manipulated her son into exposing himself to having a felony on his record (perjury), it would have been a different matter.
At present, the 15-year-old in the Maryland case is only being charged as a juvenile. But I'm hoping that at some point, police and prosecutors at least consider charging her as an adult along with her 17-year-old crony. After what I experienced because of my ex-wife exploiting her autistic son, I'm of the mind that exploiting the disabled is something that should be dealt with severely.