Autism Memorial: Can you help me?

[Callista]

I came here once ages ago and just remembered the place existed, mostly because some links led me here.

I have been working on a rather big project lately. Here:

Autism Memorial Project

The idea is to memorialize autistic people who have died essentially because of ablist prejudice... whether that's a parent who didn't want an autistic child, a cop who thought it was a good idea to shoot the young black autistic man who couldn't respond to him, or the person staying in an institution who couldn't get medical care, or who suffocated during restraint, or was poisoned by overmedication. Et cetera.

The really horrible part of it is that often times it's the parents who killed their children who get the sympathy. Like, "How hard it must have been to raise an autistic child," or, "I can sympathize; they must have been so stressed." Nobody seems to sympathize with the vulnerable child--the youngest of the children on my memorial was only six months old--who probably died in pain and fear, betrayed by the person s/he should have been able to depend on. So when I put up a memorial page, I don't even mention the murderer by name. I try to find out who the person was in life.

A few of the restraint deaths led me here. Occasionally, descriptions of kids who died while in "troubled teen" programs would mention that they had Asperger's or another form of autism.

So what I want from you guys... I want to look through the "troubled teen industry" deaths, and find stories that fit on the memorial pages. Is there a way to tell which of these kids were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder? I would appreciate any help you could give.

[Che Gookin]

Brendan Blum, they more or less murdered him.

[Callista]

Got it.

Brendan Blum, died from medical neglect when they sent him to bed instead of taking him to the emergency room.

From the names in the wiki, I also have Joseph Winters and Jeffrey Bogrett, ages 14 and 9, both restraint deaths, but not much more detail available. I was lucky to find Jeffrey's name at all; he died in 1995 and that's a while ago as far as the internet is concerned.

You know what I hate most about those restraint-death stories? It's always phrased like, "Staff had to restrain..." or "...were forced to restrain..." as though they had no choice in the matter, like the autistic kid made them do it and they couldn't help sitting on him until he suffocated. Reminds me of the way they blame it on the kid when a parent kills an autistic child.

I'm autistic myself, and have been in psych wards, and my parents used to pin me down when I was a kid, but that was nowhere near what these kids had to go through. I swear some of these places hire sociopaths on purpose.

[Oscar]

I have sent news to the owners of other memorial blogs asking them to include your site in their link list.

[Callista]

Thanks. Is there a list of memorial blogs somewhere? I could check those.

[Oscar]

Start out at Today a child died (Run from Sweden and Jutland in Denmark) and work yourself around. I guess there are lists from 5 to 7 countries maintained by different NGO's.