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?

Would you be as calm as you want others to be if it was your son who was attacked?

Everyone reacts differently in situations like this, it’s flight or fight.

I am extremely protective over my children (regardless of them being teens) something similar happened to my daughter a few years ago when a young man/late teen repeatedly attempted to do something with her hair, it made her very uncomfortable, my response was to physically put myself between them, talking very sternly…eventually his parents appeared and did remove him, but not after lots of tutting and eye rolling at me and saying over again that ‘he had autism’ yes well perhaps it’s best if he’s not left in a queue unattended then isn’t it? If he’d physically hurt her it would have been a different outcome.

before I get jumped on my child is autistic herself

The support was inadequate but that doesn’t necessarily make it the carers fault.

As someone who used to work as a support worker for autistic adults with learning disabilities, I think you handled the situation quite well. Thinking about the people I used to support, the posters saying that they would have started screaming at the person and tried to grab his hands, would have escalated the situation and made things a lot worse for the OP's daughter and anyone else nearby. We had one young woman who when told no would start screaming and lash out at whoever was nearest. We had ways to de-escalate situations that didn't involve using the word 'no'.

It sounds like the fault lies solely with the carer. If this had happened on my watch, I would have apologised and removed the supported person from the venue immediately. We used to have little cards with the company's name and contact details on that we could give out to members of the public who were involved in an 'incident' so they could voice any concerns about what had happened.

@x2boys Yup, that's what I mean. I think if OP had said "with profound/learning disabilities," everyone would understand better the lack of capacity the young man appears to have, whereas people are getting distracted by "you have to be so sensitive about neurodiversity now."

Yanbu to freeze that is an uncontrollable reaction.

However when he was a bit too close I would have moved her or us both. And when he went into server area I would have got well out of the way so he wasn't passing any where near us again.

I’d like to think I’d have done something to defend or help her. But on the odd emergency/dangerous occasion in my life I’ve needed to react fast, I’ve just frozen to the spot. So I probably would’ve been useless too.

This young man is being failed by his carer

I think you’re getting an unnecessary bashing here OP

Something shocking happened recently where I and everyone around me just froze, so I don’t think it’s as unusual a response as you think.

To put it into context, I was at a fair where a woman was ran over by a tractor right in front of us. The tractor driver didn’t realize and rolled his wheels back and forth and the whole crowd stood there enough time for him to do that with their mouths dropped to the floor before eventually someone managed to alert him. Even then most people just froze until I shouted has someone called an ambulance and my dh got out his phone and called.

i can’t tell if that really happened. Was it a few seconds we all stood there frozen and it just feels like an entire minute. Was it all in slow motion like I remember or were we all actually really on the ball and reacting in the moment?

Maybe your mind is playing it more slowly than it happened and you couldn’t have reacted any quicker than you did,

I’ve actually realized I was about to take a tray out of the hot oven without oven gloves. Tried to tell my brain to stop but still my arms had decided to get it out and I burned myself. My reactions are incredibly slow.

YABU the second you use the phrase "If it was a normal person"

Though this is Mumsnet, so I expect a whole load of excuses 🙄

He has been attacked and attacked at his special school
It doesn't matter whst I wantvl though does if posters retaliate and start scratching disabled people, s eyes out or laying them out like they say they' will on here they will find themselves in a whole heap of trouble

And to let the carers know that learning disabled people can be convicted of assault, so they need to work on preventing the behaviour before he gets arrested.

This is just nasty.

Christ, that must have been terrible to see. That poor woman, did she survive? And I hope you're ok x

Exactly this.

I don't blame ypu for freezing the first time, but I'm absolutely stunned you let him get close enough for it to happen a second time. I'm not surprised your daughter feels let down to be honest.

I mean there's nothing you can do now as it's happened, I would be inclined to be honest with why you didn't react to your daughter and apologise. In future I would advise taking the stance that no person, especially child, deserve to be assaulted by anyone regardless of Nd/disability. If they cannot be trusted to not do this then their carer should be at their side constantly when out and about. Everyone has a right to defend themselves or their child and tbh I think I would have grabbed their hand and shouted at them without really even caring if they were Nd or not tbh. It's the carers responsibility to keep others safe from their charge

Only if they have the capacity to understand whst they have done somebody with profound learning disabilities wouldn't understand,
Somebody with mild to moderate learning disabilities might.

And your priority is him? 😳🥺

Freezing its quite a common response to shocking situations.

It can actually be a good defence. Fight, flight, freeze is the phrase (although fawn and flop are common too). You dont get to rationally pick which your body does and it doesn't do the same thing each time.

As you say, screaming stop or tackling him physicslly might have escalated it rapidly so maybe it turned out for the best. We will never know.

I hope your daughter js OK after the shock.

As a mum of two severely autistic there has been time's when both have pulled my hair. Team Teach showed us what not to do which is to try and pull their fingers away. They showed us how to press down on their hand with your hand and don't pull away but to move with their hand.

It sounds like he was fascinated by your DD hair and wanted to touch it. What did his carer do? Surely they should have stepped in. But either way it was assault and you should have phoned the police.

I think you probably did the right thing, shouting at him or touching him could have escalated things and your DD or you could have been seriously injured. Maybe your instincts kicked in and you instinctively knew that no action was the best action in this situation. It was up to his carer to manage it and they should be aware of his triggers and how to de-escalate. Maybe it was a new carer or this was a new behaviour.

I dint agree that it wasn’t the carers fault actually. I’d be very surprised if this was the first time that this has happened.

If a person with severe learning difficulties assaulted someone say with a knife and killed them they would be placed in a secure unit and not allowed out. Just because someone doesn't have mental capacity to understand doesn't mean they can can get away with abusive behaviour.

Surely physical assault is assault regardless of motivations? I agree it would likely not be a chargeable assault in this situation but it was still physical assault. Honestly I get why you froze and everyone reacts differently but if came down to a choice of being nice or stopping my DD getting hurt, I’d be pulling the person off her and screaming my head off quite frankly.