RIP Alex Spourdalakis - yet another autism murder

Alex Spourdalakis, autistic 14-year-old, was murdered last week by the very people entrusted with his care. 

RIP Alex Spourdalakis

Alex is one of such a long list. And his story has really gotten under my skin, for a number of reasons, as outlined below.


What happened?
 
His own mother, Dorothy Spourdalakis, with the support of his godmother Jolanta Agata (Agatha) Skrodska, stabbed him four times in the chest. This happened several hours after they had attempted to give him a drug overdose of sleeping pills and decided they couldn't wait any more to see if the medication would kill him. So his own mother went to the kitchen, chose a knife, went back to the bedroom, and plunged it into her own child's chest, over and over again, while he lay sleeping in his bed. She also nearly severed his hand while slitting his wrist.

She then handed the knife to her co-conspirator, his godmother and co-carer, who proceeded to use it to kill the family cat because they didn't want it to go to a shelter. Then the two women cleaned the knife, returned it to the kitchen knife block, and attempted to overdose themselves on sleeping pills. After locking the bedroom door, they laid down beside poor dead Alex and went to sleep.

The only small mercy I can see in this is that Alex was fast asleep when his mother stabbed him.


The Media Message

The media is failing Alex. As a whole, the message is currently focused on the idea that Alex was a difficult autistic teen who weighed 200 pounds and was prone to violent outbursts. His mother and godmother were "overwhelmed" and "beyond exhaustion". The media are saying that the system, by leaving them unsupported, drove these two women to commit premeditated violent murder of a helpless autistic teen.

What the media seems to not realise is this: the message they are spreading is that the lack of supports and services probably justified murder, even premeditated murder. It's apparently not their fault. It's everyone else's. Also, an autistic person's life has no real value, and it's okay to commit murder in order to step back from personally difficult circumstances.

I would appeal to the media to spend more time looking into Alex's story, finding out who he really was and how he touched lives, sharing those details with us. If this were not a disabled child, the media would automatically do so. They would raise him up, spend time talking about how wonderful he had been in life, how he had touched so many lives, how loved he was by his community, and would share little personal stories offered by people who had known him.  They would do this while concurrently pushing home the point that murdering one's children is not okay, and publicly vilifying the parent.

But because Alex is autistic, and despite the crime being so violent and awful - and premeditated - once again the message is one of sympathy for the murdering parent. Why is it justifiable to violently kill an autistic teen, but not okay to kill a neurotypical one? Why is that the default position of the media?

The media needs to turn this lens on the choice of focus they use, because they are propagating the tragic and horrific idea that disabled children's lives don't hold the same worth as other children's lives. They need to pick up their game and get the message right.




Let's look at the situation more bluntly and honestly.

Earlier in 2013, Alex's mother had publicly appealed for help and she claims that help had not been forthcoming. She purportedly received $15,000 in cash raised from concerned citizens who sent money. Nobody seems to know how that money was dispersed. And later there was an additional appeal for more money. She did receive an offer of DCFS services via the hospital two weeks before she killed Alex, but she apparently rejected those services.

Instead, she took Alex out of hospital. She took him home, and after just a week, started to conspire with his godmother to kill him. 

She gave up on her own son.
She chose to kill him.
She spent a week talking about it and planning it with another person.
She premeditated it.
There was no sudden mental snap.
It wasn't a crime of passion.
She didn't suddenly fly into a rage and do something terrible in the heat of the moment.
She planned it.
FOR A WEEK.
And then carried it out, three times.
She gave him an overdose of sleeping pills.
She waited for hours, checking his pulse and breathing to see if he was dead yet.
That was murder attempt number one. 
Eventually she decided more drastic action was needed.
So, after attempting to murder him once and failing, she decided to do it again.
She went and got that knife from the kitchen.
She probably spent time deciding which knife would be best for the job.
Then she went back to the bedroom, stood over her sleeping son.
She probably took a moment to think about which way would be best to stab him. 
Then she plunged the knife into her son's chest.
And she did it again.
And she did it again.
And she did it one final time.
That was murder number two. 
Then she sliced open his wrist for good measure - this would be the third attempt to kill him.
She nearly took off his hand, she cut his wrist so deep.


She murdered her own son in three different ways, to make sure it was really done. She was methodical, systematic and patient. She made sure the job was done and there was no chance of his survival.

There is nothing here to be sympathetic about.


I am also suspicious of the supposed suicide attempt by these two women. Given they already had seen the sleeping pills not work in their attempt to kill Alex, I question the veracity of their claims that they were attempting suicide. I am of the view that they more likely wanted to make themselves look like victims and garner sympathy after they were found.


So, what's to be done?
 
It's really very simple.

Next time you hear of an autistic or disabled child killed by his/her parents, instead of thinking,
"Oh those poor parents, they must've been desperate."
Remind yourself to think this:
"Oh that poor child, how awful."

It comes down to people seeing it differently, and reminding others to do so as well. Murder of a child is simply not the behaviour of a normal caring person.  It is a crime, regardless of the circumstances. It's that easy to understand.


Also, there is a Community Vigil for Alex scheduled for 7am 16 June.  Click for details.


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Other articles about Alex: 

• Karla Fisher: The Deadly Double Standard
• Jessica Wolverine: Snapping, Flipping and Killing: How high stress levels, violence and even murder are a privilege restricted to normative adults
• Mama Be Good: When An Autistic Child Is Killed 
• Onward: The List Grows Longer
• Raising Rebel Souls: The Murder of Alex Spourdalakis  
• Emma's Hope Book: But What About Alex?  
• Where is the love? The Case of Alex Spourdalakis.
• Radical Neurodivergence: My wibbly wobbly rantings about the murder, yes murder, of Alex Spourdalakis.  
• Autism Highway: Awareness No One Wants 
• Wendy Baskin: It Takes A Village To Kill A Child 
• A Diary of a Mom: How do we get from here to there 
• Ship of Fools: Memory Eternal, Alex Spourdalakis Discussion
• Triplet Mom: Let's Get Real About Autism
• Kristina Chew: Mother Kills Autistic Son, May Be Charged With Hate Crime
• Respectful Insolence: Autism Biomed and the Murder of Alex Spourdalakis

Autism Speaks video "I Want to Say..."

The video is called "I want to say...". The organisation is called "Autism Speaks". I've said it before and I'll say it again, autism isn't doing the talking here.

I had thought this video might share more of what the autistics included in it wanted to say. Instead, parents are lovingly describing their kids. The doctor is intensely talking and telling us what to think. The teacher is sharing his heartfelt experiences and observations. The technology used by the kids is paraded before us occasionally, while adults describe their observations of how it appears to work well, almost miraculously. These voices are fine, in general. But really, where are the voices of these children we are watching? What is their message? What do they want to say? What was it like for these young people to finally be able to communicate? How did they feel?

This was a wonderful opportunity to allow them to share, to educate us on their experience. An opportunity sadly set aside.

Autism Speaks' latest promotional video is a vast improvement on the blatant scaremongering of the past, where they would show frightening scenes of screaming children, desperate crying parents and families in disarray. Before, they slapped us in the face with terrifying trauma and told us that was autism. Disappointingly though, I find this new one more cunningly manipulative.

There is still some clear intent to frighten viewers, with alarmist statements from the doctor, such as "more children will be diagnosed with autism than AIDS, diabetes and cancer combined". These things don't belong in the same sentence with autism, and this statement is offensive and irresponsible. It's an unreasonable comparison - all three of those others are potentially deadly and devastating diseases. Putting these together is Autism Speaks' cunning way of continuing to perpetuate their ongoing message that autism is a disease. They have declared war on autism, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised if they hold onto their original message in different forms.

Let's be clear - autism is not a disease.

Also, the intensely dramatic statements by the doctor make it seem like more and more children will get autism over the coming years, and we should all be very afraid. He is making it everyone's potential problem. It appears his role is to intensify the urgency of the "problem" and make people want to send money before their child gets autism. Without actually using the word, he is cleverly reminding us of the long time message of "epidemic". At least previously, they came right out and said it. It feels much more manipulative now, and honestly I find it disingenuous, condescending and offensive.

I loved seeing all the beautiful children and their experiences. I loved seeing the passionate parents who obviously love their children completely as they are, and only want what they think is best for their kids. (Sure, they made some mistakes, but it was a nice change to see adoring parents instead of overwhelmed parents on one of these videos). I loved the teacher, and his obvious humility in the face of the courage of his students. I appreciated his honesty when he described how he realised now, that he had previously pushed them so hard, without knowing what he had been putting them through. There was generally a lot more empathy expressed for the experience of the kids as well. I wish though, that the kids got to communicate more. Nobody was asking them questions for the video. I wanted to know what they were thinking, instead of having that guessed by and those guesses imposed on me by neurotypical adults. It seemed like it was more important to show a blend of minorities across genders (which I will say, is still an improvement on the previous videos), than to take a moment to hear what these young people had to share.

I always love seeing Temple Grandin on anything, she is so awesome. But where were the other autistic adults? And anyway, she was talking about her experiences as a child. Do Autism Speaks really still not realise that these same challenges/needs exist for adults? Or is this a  purposeful exclusion of autistic adults because they have clearer messages about what they want/need?

Other phrases/statements which bothered me:

"Swallowed by his autism" - in that particular case, he is swallowed by his pain, not autism. Autism does not equal pain and the two concepts should always be separated. And besides, the autism was already there, it is who he is. To act like it is a separate entity, some sort of invisible enemy swallowing him up, is not okay.

[Autism] "is a nightmare imposed"- the doctor should know better than to use alarmist words/phrases like this.

"He's really sweet, for being an autistic child" - this suggests that autistic children are generally something other than sweet. Apparently this boy must be very unusual, to be considered sweet. I know this is his mother (a layperson) who says it, not Autism Speaks. But Autism Speaks chose to include it in the video. Shame on you, Autism Speaks. How irresponsible can you be?

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Click here for other flash blog posts on this topic

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Click below to watch the video on Youtube:

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Autism Wars - Why are autistic people protesting Autism Speaks?

They call themselves 'Autism Speaks', but it's certainly not autism doing the talking. 

You may be too busy running your family, or your classroom, or just getting through the morass of your sensory day, to have noticed what's happening with Autism Speaks.

So here's a quick rundown - Autism Speaks is possibly the most powerful and most wealthy of all the non-profits associated with Autism. They raise vast amounts of money to put into autism research. They claim to know what families need, but they focus only on finding a cure, instead of providing supports to families and autistic people to help them through the experience of living.

They consider autism a disease to be eradicated.

They are a campaigning machine, and push hard for autism awareness - and more people are aware of autism than ever before. But their videos make regular people afraid of autism, exploit autistic children and their families, show only negative views of autistic children screaming and tantruming, even once showed a mother saying she had thought about murdering her son. These ads effectively erase the possibility of acceptance. After all, they are searching for a cure, their goal is to eradicate, so of course they will do what they must to prevent acceptance.

Autism Speaks also refuses to employ people with autism. In one famous situation they almost employed a woman in an administrative role, and she went through several interviews, but when they found out she had an autistic child, they dropped her from their list of candidates for the position. The board deciding what is best for autistics, and influencing the rest of the autism community's direction, refuses to allow in any autistic voice. Sadly, because of Autism Speaks, autistic people are more ostracised than ever before. They are seen as "less than". They are seen as something to fear. They are seen as an epidemic, a disease.

Autism Speaks are definitely not interested in hearing the real voices of autism. They are not interested in hearing what autistic adults are saying all across the world now, which is essentially this: "See me for who I am. My brain is different to yours, not diseased. Accept me, and help me with the things I find difficult. Stop trying to eradicate me, because frankly, that's hurtful and cruel."


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Check out this response to the current ad campaign, written by the mother of an autistic person:

Autism Speaks, I Want to Say....
"Families placed their nonspeaking children before your cameras, trusted you to present their families fairly and your organization again went and turned them into "Jerry's Kids"."

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Is autism an epidemic? I think not...

In the years between 2006 and now, the incidence of autism in the USA has increased from 1 in 110 to 1 in every 88 children. Does this mean we have an epidemic on our hands, or is something else at play?

I have long-held that claims of autism being an epidemic is merely sensationalist fear-mongering on the part of the media and the ever-hungry research funding machine. There is absolutely no evidence that autism is an epidemic. Rather, we have become better at describing and therefore identifying it. Some other diagnoses have also been moved across to the autism umbrella as more knowledge has become available and therapists have viewed their patients through a different lens. As well, awareness has increased significantly, and the criteria for diagnosis broadened in the early 90s, in particular by including Asperger's Syndrome.

There are a range of sensible reasons for the increase in diagnosis of autism, the greatest being awareness.

Growing awareness tends to work just like a snowball. The further it runs, the fatter it gets. So as more people become aware of something, still more people consequently become aware, who then make even more people aware - and so the awareness-snowball continues to grow.

I believe acceptance is another significant factor. The history of the politics of autism has meant that until the very recent past, parents were frequently against labelling their children. Instead, families often hid their children from doctors if they thought something might be developmentally "wrong" - and they had very real reasons to do so. That's a whole 'nother article, but the quick version is that a diagnosis often meant parents would be told they had been inadequate and could even mean that children might be removed from the home and institutionalised due to such "inadequacy". It is really only since the 1990s that this fear of external judgement has begun to diminish, and parents have instead been free  to focus their energies more on addressing the needs of their children. A diagnosis helps to do this, so people have become more pro-diagnosis as a result. My belief is that this shift has also led to a great deal more chance of a child being diagnosed, who would previously have not been.

So, the big question is...

Is Autism an “Epidemic” or Are We Just Noticing More People Who Have It?

(click to read the article in a new window)

I highly recommend this article for some insight into what's really going on, rather than buying into all that guff from the sensationalist media.

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Media Faux Pas...

I've just added a new category on here, which is "Media Faux Pas". This is in response to what seems to be an ever-increasing problem in the media, who so often grasp at an element of the whole issue, or at fear-mongering and sensationalist words like "epidemic" and "disease" - and then spout a bunch of ill-supported or poorly described information at the general public, but claim to be stating facts.

Sometimes it's a media outlet of somewhat ill-repute, so if we have an inquiring mind, we take their comments with a grain of salt; we might not assume they are presenting us with the whole truth. Some of us might research further on information presented by a less reputable organisation. While I feel their input into the social rhetoric and their contribution to the overall hegemony can be vast, I am of the belief that in contrast, the more reputable media organisations ought to subject themselves to an even higher standard of scrutiny before they release their comments into the public arena.

A reputable media organisation reaps great benefit from that very reputation, so they need to work to deserve that reputation. They must always work to ensure that if they present something to the public, it will withstand the test of scrutiny.

This is primarily because being a reputable outlet means that most people will believe what is being said. So if the information is erroneous or presented as fact when it's not supported by relevant experts (for example), it can cause greater long term harm, because more people will see the content as credible.



Below is a very recent example from the New York Times. Here's the intro paragraph:

"So here’s the short of it: At least a subset of autism — perhaps one-third, and very likely more — looks like a type of inflammatory disease. And it begins in the womb."

Click to read on:

"An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism"

It's an interesting article, but even that title had me worried at the outset. The title is a statement, not just an idea or a question. It puts itself up there next to the announcement of the scientific fact that autism is now found in 1 in 88 children. The author basically says he knows the cause of autism in that title. Very irresponsible, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm not a scientist, so here's another very detailed article which goes into proper analysis of the content in the NY Times item.

Autism, immunity, inflammation, and the New York Times

"On Saturday, the New York Times online ran a piece from its Sunday Review Opinion pages entitled, “An immune disorder at the root of autism.” The piece is packed with overstatements and overinterpretations and lacks much-needed modulation and qualification. More than that, it promises a "preventative" for autism that is, pardon me, off the hook(worm)."