AIBU to have not reacted when my daughter’s hair was grabbed, twisted and pulled by a non-verbal autistic man.

[SillyOldBucket]

At the weekend we visited a National Trust venue and stopped at the café for some lunch. My husband and one teenager daughter were sitting outside while I and our other 17-year-old daughter, who has long very blonde hair, joined the queue inside. I was standing just in front of her in the queue when I became aware of a boy/young man (I would guess aged about 20) beside us. He had his face up close to my daughter and was smiling at her. Initially, I thought it was someone she knew from college or her Saturday job but then all of a sudden he grabbed her hair, twisted it tightly around his hand, and was pulling very hard. I quickly realized that she didn’t know him and that he was non-verbal, probably autistic. However, I then remember that I kind of froze, thinking what do I do and didn’t know how to react. If it was a normal person, I would have at the very least shouted at them to let go or tried to prise their hand open, but I wasn’t sure if he would have responded badly or done something worse. I had time to think all this before his carer appeared and tried to get him to release his grip, but it took a good minute. To make matters worse, the young man then skipped into the kitchen behind the servery and his carer had to bring him back out, walked past us and exactly the same thing happened again!! The carer managed to get the boy to release his grip but no apology or anything. My daughter was quite shocked by it, but I think she was more shocked that I didn’t intervene, and I feel terrible and ashamed. My gut reaction should have been to protect her, but I think because we are always being taught to be understanding and tolerant of neurodiversity, I just froze not knowing what to do or how to react. What would anyone else have done in this situation? Can anyone with specialized knowledge advise on what would have been the correct thing to do? It’s made me realise that there is very little public knowledge/education on how to respond when confronted with a situation like this and also raises the question of whether it was assault. If it had been someone without autism, it would surely have been assault but because they were clearly on the spectrum, are we to be more tolerant despite being subjected to pain and shock?

It’s fight, flight, freeze or fawn, and I’m pretty sure that you don’t get to choose how you react; it just happens. So you can’t blame yourself for reacting in any one particular way.

From past experience I tend to be fight. More so when it’s on behalf of someone else. Someone being SEN wouldn’t make a difference to that. I think his carer needs a rocket up his arse though. There are people who wouldn’t hesitate to thump him in those circumstances and his carer needs to be taking better care of him and not treating him like a mischievous toddler who everyone will humour.

Woah, looks like we've got a badass on our hands.

This is what I thought.

No, the carer didn't even say anything. In fact he was almost laughing as though it were some kind of playing.

We've gone from the carer somehow not being present with this guy, to him laughing at a situation where his ward was acting very inappropriately?

With regards to the police.

The OP would've had to have asked the carer for the guy's details/carer's details and given that under the carer's 'care', he managed to assault the OP's DD twice and run into a kitchen, I'm not sure how forthcoming those details would be.

How do you know he was actually autistic?

I am fed up of any bad behaviour being automatically labelled autism via armchair diagnoses. No wonder there is so much stigma around it.

Try not to be to hard on yourself, it was a shock and something you wasn't expecting to happen.

My son is autistic and only 7, lacks understanding and loves hair, he likes to pull on it to get loose strands to play with, it's a sensory need for him. This could potentially be him when he's older.

The blame lies with the carer. Why wasn't he being supervised so he could intervene straight away if hair pulling were to happen. Also he should have most definitely apologised to your daughter.

As for assault this young man probably doesn't even understand that what he is doing is assault. That doesn't make it ok though that's why his carer should have been stood next to him. I hope your daughter is ok.

Just commenting again op to say I think you were absolutely right not to shout at him. It sounds like he had an obvious learning disability. The autism spectrum is very broad and I think posters saying it's no excuse and they would have kicked off maybe don't grasp just how disabled this man was.
He was out with a carer and the carer should have been responsible for him.
Just for next time, talking to him and calmly asking him to stop or the word "no" may have helped.

Well no the young man would not be treated the same as a typical person
Because it sounds like he also has severe learning disabilities, the police/CPS can't charge someone who doesn't have the cognitive ability to understand what they have done.

I understand you were shocked and froze - but why are you asking if you were being unreasonable? You seem to be justifying it rather than regretting it.

You stood there saying and doing nothing while he pulled her hair for an entire minute? Uh huh.
I'm agreeing with this. A few seconds to compose yourself maybe but why didnt your maternal instinct kick in. You literally watched your dd being attacked twice, even if it is by someone ND.

The people who are judging you are presumably not aware of the stress response system beyond fight or flight. There are a whole load of common ways our limbic system does in the face of immediate danger (or perceived immediate danger) and one of them is to freeze. It's not a bad option if faced with a bigger stronger attacker, which is one of the reasons why women are more predisposed towards this, or the befriend, collapse or defend possible options rather than fight or flight.

I say option, but the main thing to know about stress responses is that your most ancient survival part of your brain does it automatically, without your conscious control. Thinking is heavy on the resources and in a survival situation those resources are better spent by the body on doing something else - priming the body to run, fight or hide, for example. EVERYBODY has a go to stress response tendency, whether it is the most appropriate one or not. and EVERYBODY gets triggered into a stress response more frequently than most of us realise on a micro level. You can rationalise that this wasn't a survival situation, but the automatic reaction of the stress system kicked in long before you had a chance to have a thought, and it prevented your brain from thinking properly.

To add to that, you could well have caused him to have gripped and pulled harder, twist, scratch, kick, punch, rip her hair out or grab if you'd have tried to intervene -You (and all of us) have no idea how to handle him. AKA: intervention without knowledge of appropriate restraint techniques and without knowing this individual could have made the situation a lot worse. I'd say your response was a pretty good one.

I think this is one of the issues with the Asperger’s type autism being included in the same umbrella as the very complex autism with learning difficulties.
Most people don’t come across the second type very often and so don’t have the awareness of just how disabled these people are

Maybe because sometimes learning disabilities is a co morbity of autism ?
Practically every child in my child's special school for children with severe and profound learning disabilities also has a diagnosis of autism.

Because it's pretty flipping obvious that he had some kind of learning disability in the situation that she describes, even before the appearance of a carer.

I'm all for stopping using amateur internet ND diagnoses to justify bad behaviour of men towards women in relationships, but that's nowhere near what the OP is describing.

It is hard and I say this as a mum with an autistic, non-verbal six year old. I hover over him like a hawk when we are out and about as it is hard for him to understand what social interactions should not happen. He isn't particularly violent (thankfully) but (for example) in soft plays he will run up to other tables and try to grab snacks people have left and I always intervene.

I was physically assaulted at a soft play by an older autistic girl (she punched me in the back) whilst I was holding my son's hand. It was really really sore and I turned round to confront whoever it was and then saw immediately she was similar to my son (but older, bigger, stronger and violent). She looked about 14. I understood immediately that she'd punched me so that I would move out of her way as I was helping my son as he was tentatively moving up the climbing frame. Although it was painful and my initial reaction was anger and shock, I realised that actually the fault was with her parents who were not beside her. She was on her own. I watched her for a bit and saw her returning to a table and it was a actually grandparent sitting on their phone, not watching or intervening!

Also it's very obvious my son is non verbal as not only dies he not speak but he makes very loud random noises

Difference here is 2 carers were intervening.

A common natural reaction to trauma is freeze. A lot more common than most people think.

Hold on your DD was assaulted twice, you did nothing at the time of the assault and then did nothing after the assault, that is appalling.
At the very least I would have called the police to say that my DD had been attacked twice in a public place, I would have expected to take witness statements and hope that the police took it seriously. Autistic or not assault is assault and men cannot be allowed to attack women under ANY circumstance and if this violent person is such a danger to others then I am sorry he should not be in a position where he will cause harm and trauma.
Did nobody else in the cafe react, and even if you didn't react whilst your DD was under attack why didn't you do something after, how did you just let the attacker and the person with them just walk away.

Honestly I'd feel let down if I were your daughter. If anyone touched my child I'd have clawed his fucking eyes out regardless of any disability. His carer would probably have got a smack as well tbh.

No way would I have allowed a man to assault my child like that.

But I am a fighter-
( Instinct to protect my child )

It was probably fairly obvious if you have everseen a severely autistic child/adult it's usually very obvious
My son will spin throw things ( given half a chance) make loud repetitive noises kick off his shoes etc etc, it's immediately obvious he has complex disabilities including autism.

What would you do ?

Are you completely dense?

Most women can’t “defend themselves” against adult men. That is why the statistics for women being murdered or otherwise being subjected to male violence are the way they are.

Being ND clearly doesn’t make this man any less of a danger.