Photo and caption from The Province, April 23, 2014
Photo and caption from the Province, April 23, 2014
As reported by Sam Cooper in The Province April 23, 2014 a small and desperate Prince Rupert, British Columbia mother has killed her large. powerful, self aggressive, autistic son and then killed herself. Members of her family shared their story with The Province hoping to increase support for autistic children in northern BC. The article indicates that the son, Robert, weighed approximately 270 pounds. His mother Angie Robinson weighed 100 pounds.
Angie Robinson's son Robert engaged in very severe self injury including smashing his head through the rear window of Angie's pick up truck and getting worse afterward until he had to be taken to a hospital and sedated with heavy doses of Ativan. It is believed that Angie Robinson killed her son with a lethal dose of Ativan. The mother had gown desperate from a lack of support and no longer believed she could care for her son.
According to The Province article the mother, Angie Robinson, left a final Facebook post before ending her life:
"On 11:56 a.m. on April 2, Angie Robinson wrote a last Facebook post: “More, more, more needs to be done for our teens with special needs, they are neglected … Canada needs more residential and respite care for families hoping to keep their children at home.”"
News of this tragedy will provoke more outrageous, ridiculous attacks blaming deaths like those of this desperate mother and her son on parents and organizations who provide honest descriptions of severe autism disorders. Those who believe that autism is just a different way of being, a joy, even a blessing, will simply ignore the hard evidence, the hard reality, that parents of severely autistic children actually live first hand.
Sadly, this is not the first such incident in Canada or the US. The inadequate group home networks can not provide the necessary long term professional care for challenging, severely autistic adults like Angie Robinson's son Robert. A decent modern professionally run and staffed permanent residential care system is needed in BC and elsewhere in Canada ... including New Brunswick.
