Mother Kills Her Autistic Child and Herself and Throwing Stones Will Not Bring Them Back

I didn't know Tracy Hawks, 47, of Howard County, Maryland who police say killed her  autistic and mildly  intellectually disabled son Christopher Melton on June 4 using a gas generator. ExploreHoward.com  says the mother suffered from depression and there had been a family breakup. The mother was described as being close to her son  Christopher who was described by several persons interviewed at the school he attended as a great kid, well behaved, caring and welcoming with a smile for anyone who looked at him.  

People will judge the mother and many, perhaps most,  will judge her harshly, very harshly.  I do not quarrel with those judgments. Those judgments though will not change the facts ... that the mother and her son are both gone.  The study has enough details to suggest that the son's disabilities may have had little to do with the mother's desperation. Readers like me have no way of knowing that with any certainty. 

What is certain though is that with better assistance from communities and governments,   with real  support and services, with the knowledge  that an autistic child will live a decent life after a parent has passed on,   some ... some ...  of these cases would turn out differently.  In some, not all, but some of these cases, a child with autism would live and perhaps enjoy life to the fullest.  Throwing stones at the dead parents will not, however, change a thing.

Texas Autism Filicide: A Mother of an Autistic Child Provides Perspective and Sound Advice

It is very difficult to read each and every news account of filicide, the killing of a child by his or her parents.  Sometimes the killings flow from bitter, nasty domestic relationships.  In some, perhaps most, the parents involved had mental health issues.  Each instance has to be examined on its own set of facts and, given the nature of the act,  by the appropriate legal and mental health authorities.  We should all be extremely careful not to make sweeping generalizations based on the personal characteristics of the individuals involved in a particular case. 

This week there are news reports of a Pakistani-American woman in Texas who strangled her two autistic children and , as reported by the Dallas Morning News, informed 911 operators that she did so because they had autism and she wanted normal children.  In the internet world of autism discussions such a  tragic event  feeds into many issues, and much hostility,  on all sides of the various autism perspectives.  There is also a danger that the tragedy could feed into feelings of hostility held by some people towards people of Muslim faith since September 11 2001 although most news reports I have read of it, including the DMN article just  referenced, do not mention the mother's religion.

I found it very  helpful  to read the wise comments on this tragedy by  the Muslim mother of an autistic child on the blog site My Autistic Muslim Child in a post called Support and Responsibilities in which the author references the accused mother's Muslim religion and asks people not to characterize Islam  based on one person's actions, urges us to consider the mental health challenges of the mother who killed her children, without making excuses for her actions,  and points out the need for autism support systems,

I recommend this article by the author of My Autistic Muslim Child for its balance, sensitivity and wisdom and because it is written by some one who is also both a Muslim and the mother of an autistic child.   It is difficult to quote from this article without quoting the entire article so I ask you to read it  for yourself.  I will quote the two concluding paragraphs where the author talks about the need to get at the root of the problem:

"We have a serious problem in our society, and people of all religions and ideologies must work together to stop the violence against children with autism or other disabilities. We need to educate our communities about this issue, and make them understand that such crimes cannot be justified by any religious teachings.

Also, we must create a support system for our communities, so if they do not receive any support from their families (which is the case a lot of times too for different reasons), then they have an outlet to which to go and acquire the much needed help from others. Our religious facilities must have an adequate and functional social service program to help the needy. The finger-pointing must stop, and we need to admit this problem is OUR problem, not just isolated, random incidents. Once we reach this understanding, we have a good chance to work together as a society and get to the root of the problem so as to prevent a tragedy like this to happen again."

Autism Awareness: Blaming Other Parents Won't Change Autism Realities

Kristina Chew is a mother of an autistic son and a well known and influential autism blogger whose views have been sought by prominent media institutions in the United States.  She has visited this site on occasion and left some kind words. Her writings about her own son are those of a mother who loves her son deeply. The pictures of her autistic son enjoying life with his parents are particularly moving.  When I see her son's pictures and read Ms Chew's comments about her Charlie it seems that in many ways he is very much like my son Conor.  

I have always disagreed though with Kristina Chew's  tendency to downplay the harsher realities of autism disorders. I am particularly saddened to see her recent writings about two incidents of parents taking the lives of their autistic children in which her point seems to be that we should not talk about the negative realities of autism disorders, we should emphasize the positive aspects of what are neurological disorders in order to prevent other parents from harming their autistic children. Ms Chew says that we should pretend that autism is a good thing to be embraced. We should ignore the fact that many with autistic disorder will live narrow restricted lives, many in residential care facilities, some in psychiatric hospitals.  We should ignore the basic fact that, as parents, we sought medical attention for our child before we knew he was autistic, because we knew something was seriously wrong with him. Before his diagnosis twelve years ago I did not know what autism was. Twelve years later I have a better understanding and I have no intention of embracing it.

I love my son and look forward to the time I spend with him.  I post many pictures on this blog site and on my Facebook page of Conor; the overwhelming majority of which are very positive.   But I do not lose sight of the realities of his autistic disorder.  I have done my humble best to improve my son's life and I have, along with other autism parents who refuse to wear rose colored glasses,  fought hard to help other autistic children obtain evidence based early intervention and education opportunities. I have also lobbied actively, admittedly without any success to date, for improvements to our province's residential care system for autistic adults. On this site I push hard for autism research which will be more oriented toward finding out what causes autism, finding cures and treatments.  I see no reason why my son should live forever with the deficits imposed by his neurological disorder if ways to help overcome those deficits can be found.

The fact is some people are overwhelmed by life and break down.  Some do horrible things and in some cases those persons do those things to their autistic children.  Some of the parents who commit these acts may have their own mental health issues independent of their child's autism. To suggest that other parents should stop talking about autism realities in order to prevent such tragedies is not based on evidence, logic or common sense.

The way to prevent such tragedies, to the extent they can be prevented,  is to  find help for the parents who need their own medical or psychiatric assistance, to speak honestly about the realities of autism disorders, to stop the almost exclusive focus on the genetic research obsession (it's gotta be genetic, Teresa Binstock, 1999) which has yielded nothing of value to help autistic children. The way to prevent such tragedies  is to conduct research to find the environmental triggers of autism, to find how autism works biologically, to find cures and treatments for autism disorders, to provide more and better early intervention, schooling and adult care.

The way to prevent such tragedies is to commit our selves as people, as parents, to helping our children overcome their neurological disorders.

I love my son and that is exactly why I will never put on the rose colored glasses and embrace his autistic disorder.