(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on
April 28, 2012)
As most people familiar with autism already know,
the developmental disorder makes self-expression for children and adults affected
by autism difficult at best and impossible at worst. That aspect
of the disability alone makes them susceptible to a social
problem that would go unnoticed by their families and friends: verbal
abuse. I bring up this fact because two days ago, I
read an article in the Telegram and Gazette about how an
autistic 10-year-old boy has been going through verbal abuse at his New
Jersey school and how his father found out about it by placing a hidden tape
recorder on him upon receiving reports of outbursts and physical violence
against teachers. Though the recordings, the father learned
how members of the school’s staff were calling his son names like
“bastard,” “tard,” “a hippo in a ballerina suit,” and “little dog.” Just
today, I
read that a teacher was placed on paid leave by the school upon learning of the
probe. Legal and privacy issues aside, I find
this treatment against a child who can’t express the problem on his
own to be revolting. In my opinion as an autistic individual, the teachers
responsible for this abuse seem to consider children like him to be sub-human. According
to the article, there have been at least nine other incidents across the
US since 2003 in which verbal abuse against autistic children at school. Those
were only officially reported cases. Now I’m not trying to raise a panic
among parents here, but I wonder if there are other such incidents that are
going unreported due in part to the fact that autistic children have
difficulty expressing themselves, especially when it comes to them being
mistreated by other people.
