to be fed up of people using Aspergers as an excuse

[SomeGuy]

Just reading DM (yes, IABU, I know), story about some bloke who got into a facebook tiff and sued for libel:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298010/Facebook-libel-Law-student-dubbed-paedophile-wins-10-000-li bel-damages.html

'Jeremiah Barber posted an indecent image of children on Raymond Bryce's page on the social networking website along with the comment: 'Ray, you like kids and you are gay so I bet you love this picture, Ha ha'.

The image, which hundreds of users could see, showed Mr Bryce superimposed on to a collage of pornographic pictures.

It was 'tagged' with Mr Bryce's name, allowing his 800 friends on the site to see it.

His victim, who is now a law student, pursued the civil claim against his former school friend and was awarded £10,000 at the High Court yesterday for the stress and anxiety the incident caused him.'

'Mr Bryce, 24, who lives with his parents in Stone, Staffordshire, suffers from high functioning Asperger's Syndrome, but has secured a place on a full time degree course studying law at Stafford University.'

So in other words he's intelligent and successful and has lots of friends. So why should we care that he 'suffers' from Aspergers? It doesn't make the libel any worse, or make him more of a victim.

Here's another story, from Friday:

www.thisiskent.co.uk/tunbridgewells/Asperger-sufferer-admits-cash-card-theft-friend/article-2442184- detail/article.html

'Sevenoaks Magistrates' Court heard on Friday how 22-year-old Michael Funnell, of Addison Road, invited a group of friends around to his house for a party on March 6.

He took their coats to hang them up and when Steve Goodwin's back was turned, took his bank card, before withdrawing £120 from a cash point.

He had memorised his friend's PIN when with him a couple of days before.

Brian Ferris, defending, said: "I am told my client has Asperger's syndrome. He can offer no explanation as to why he steals in this way."'

You wouldn't get them saying 'I am told thay my client doesn't have a very good job, because he is not very bright.'

Another story from today:

www.thisistotalessex.co.uk/news/Spared-prison-camera-showers/article-2442265-detail/article.html

' A MINISTRY of Defence manager who set up covert cameras to watch naked men in the showers has been spared jail.

Hensman, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, was working as network manager in communications and systems at the MoD police HQ in Wethersfield when he was accused of voyeurism.

Judge Anthony Goldstaub QC told him: "You were originally prosecuted for sexual offences [voyeurism] but because of your psychiatric makeup these charges were dropped.

"In February 2006 you set up some sort of video recording equipment which recorded movements of people coming in and out of the showers, involving some images of naked males' private parts.

"You were doing it because of your psychiatric condition."

Asperger's is an autism disorder characterised by social interaction problems.

Judge Goldstaub said that people have to "accommodate" others with psychiatric disorders and be "tolerant", adding "it's not their fault".'

It seems to be a popular plea for people accused of child pornography offences:

www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/2031606.indecent_images_man_avoids_jail/

'A BARMAN who was caught with more than 900 indecent images of children has been spared jail.

Southwark Crown Court heard because Jonathan Bristow had Asperger's syndrome he could act on impulse and become obsessive about collecting things.'

Oh yes agree leonie. Even for ds1 who will require lifelong care the better handle he can get on his challenging behaviours the more options he will have.

His autism doesn't limit him that much. His inability to queue or sit limits what he can do enormously. It's why I'm willing to put up with the ruts from the general public to try and tackle it.

you should just buy him a lampost for his bedroom saintly and he could stay in his room all day rocking and sniffing it
surely?

Ruts? Tuts/complaints/lemon sucking

Omg if he had a lamppost in his bedroom he would be there all day! That would probably occupy a week of the summer holidays (:cackles

It could be the autism equivalent as a naive young woman having a poledancing pole in her lounge

You know yabu thats why you started this!

Pmsl

actually you have a point. It's hard to know with ds1 when he wants rescuing from his complusions. I used to think he loved the washing machine. Then he started to complain when I went to use the washing machine. It was only when he made me lick the kitchen door before skipping off back to google maps that I realised his washing machine watching was totally compulsive and he had no wish to sit smabd watch the whole cycle - his complusion meant he had no choice.

We progressed from locked doirs, to shut doors and now he can ignore it with the door open. He may hate his inability to walk down the street - I have no idea.

I am answering this both as a lawyer and a parent of a child being assessed for AS.

I know my son does not see things the way that other people do and would often not be able to intuit that something was wrong. However, he can learn rules and is actually very good at this.

The issue with criminal law is that guilt is often determined by intent. You are only guilty of murder if you had intent to kill someone. You are only guilty of theft if you intended to take someone's property away. This means that if you were not capable of forming the requisite intent then you cannot be guilty of the offence.

That said, there are other offences where you are gulity irrespective of intentent (eg sex with underage children). In these cases it should not matter what the mental health of the accused is. If they are found guilty, they are guilty. However, we as a society may then wish to consider what it is appropriate to do - to punish someone or to try and help them where they could not control what they did.

Lick??? Lock! (iPod)

'Lick??? Lock! (iPod)'

I thought that was taking parental support a step further than I'd have been willing to.

The concept that defence lawyers use anything available to them to try and mitigate their clients responsibility is hardly new is it.
The fact that some are using aspergers does not mean that the condition will not sometimes genuinely contribute to a persons bad/criminal behaviour.
Saying 'oh I hate how aspergers is used as an excuse' is like saying 'I hate how depression/paranoia/schizophrenia/race/sex/
addiction is used as an excuse' Just because sometimes it is 'used' does not mean that it is never part of the reason.

Saying that a person with aspergers whose condition manifests itself in a compulsion to steal should be smart enough to learn not to is, if I may say, monumentally stupid.

If intelligence were the means by which people overcame obsession then life would be very easy. It is as facile as telling people with depression to cheer up.

I can't bring myself to scroll back and see which twat jeered about the PC brigade turning up on the thread in case it was someone I had previously thought of as reasonable.

The world is a pretty grim place when a thread like this is started and the meerest suggestion that any explaination may be forthcoming to counter the assumptions in the OP is jeered at as PCness.

I have spent a great deal of the last 13 years trying to make my son understand societies norm and what constitutes acceptable behaviour. Some things he will never understand and sometimes his compulsions would overwhelm his ability to comply. That is not an excuse.

It seems to me that many expressing a glee at the tone of this thread have been quite cheered by the excuse to be negative about the syndrome.

Goosey
excellent post.

Compulsions are much misunderstood. It took me 10 years before I fully understood how much of ds1's behaviour he has almost zero control over.

Lucy Blackman is a non verbal adult with autism. She's not daft - she has a degree in English Lit - but her compulsions mean she has an assistant with her when she goes out. She write in 'autism and the myth of being alone' that she didn't fully understand how ingrained her compulsions were for a long time. She describes how she typed 'don't let me force you into mcdonald's' as she shoved her assistant in through the door. She said she hated mcd's, had no wish to eat there but as soon as she saw the sign..... Woosh, in through the doors.

The whole point i.e. most of the reasons for diagnosis/symptoms whatever you want to call them, of Aspergers, is that they don't get the social norms, it not about right and wrong a lot of the time more I suppose what it appropriate.

I have a DS who is on target for A*'s in every subject. Who now has a intellectual understanding of many/most social interactions but through lack of social imagination cannot transfer this understanding to different or unusual situations. If he then becomes flustered or confused he may then have a ''meltdown' that he can no more help than an epileptic can help having a fit.

Its hard enough for a NT child to distinguish what is just teasing and what is bulling - try explain to an Aspie pre teen lol

My DS in nursery called his teacher fat ? got in trouble but kept saying ''but it's not a lie mummy is it because she is fat!'' And she was ? but he just did not ''get'' it or learn over time by experience the same was a normal child would as he cannot ''imagine'' what the other person is feeling

I think this impairment of social imagination is probably the least understood and most troublesome aspect of Aspergers. A lot of professionals still think it means lack of imaginative play when its really lack of empathy. Its also the most invisible and most pervasive aspect ? and probably what distinguish Asperergers from lower functioning forms of autism.

I'm afraid I suspect the OP of being prejudiced against people with autism. I cannot think of another explanation for his using a case where a person with Aspergers was without any doubt the INNOCENT VICTIM of a crime in order to attack people with the condition. It's madness.
In the first case, presumably the motivator for the entire post, the poor bloke had gave money to someone he thought was a friend, but turned out to be soeone who never intended to pay him back. He was then was accused by that same person, to whom he had kindly lent money, of being a paedophile. This was a serious and wicked libel. I think most of us know that people who are a bit 'odd' and are accused or suspected of being a 'paedo' (or even a paediatrician!) have had their windows broken, their houses burned down or even been tortured to death. The fact of the victim's Aspergers was relevant in this case because, as his mother pointed out he had, like many people with Aspergers, he been the subject of a great deal of bullying by people he innocently regarded as friends. It was to show that this was not a one off act, but part of a sustained campaign of bullying, and therefore a more serious act. And as the parent of a boy with Aspergers I can promise you that this inability to spot when they are being exploited is a recurrent feature in our children's lives. Many people with Aspergers are moral, obsessed with fairness and simply do not expect the casual cruelty and manipulation that is such a part of the NT makeup. He was bullied, in part, simply because he was different.
I am at a loss to know why case in which a person with Aspergers was a victim sent the OP off on a trawl of obscure local paper websites to find stories (one is TWO YEARS OLD!) where people with autism had committed crimes and where their condition had been mentioned, sometimes simply in passing, by their counsel. I am afraid I feel sad and angry that anyone would use a case where a vulnerable person was a VICTIM is being used to attack an entire group of vulnerable people. Why do that?

Sorry, 'had given' money. Not 'have gave'. Ugh. Too cross to preview properly!

Yes, the victim was the person with Aspergers...methinks the OP has misunderstood the story! Wasn't clear to me on first reading but the victim had Aspergers, not the person who posted the stuff on Facebook.

or maybe not, is the OP actually saying the victim was trying to get more due to having Aspergers.

Am too tired to post on this thread, not thinking clearly, will go and have coffee!

Well, being unable to read a newspaper story is less appalling than deliberately looking for ways to attack people with autism, I suppose!

yes, I hope it's that, people earlier in the thread have jumped on it as well!