Restraining Order on Autistic Boy
 

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=4885322&page=1


DISCLAIMER: While this action took place in a church, it has little to do with religion, so no religious views/comments please. If the moderators feel this topic will get out of hand, I apologize and feel free to close.


However, the issue at hand is that this autistic kid gets a restraining order to keep him out of the church. On one level, yes I can see why disability rights advocates have an issue with this.

On another level, though, the bishop has a point. If this autistic boy is hitting people, or knocking people over, or grabbing girls and forcing them to sit on him, he either has to be controlled better by his parents (who seem to rationalize everything with 'he's autistic! give him a break!') or shouldn't really be allowed in a place to abuse others simply because he's not mentally capable of realizing what he's doing is wrong.

It is something I've wondered before, we as a society tend to make allowances for those with disabilities out of sympathy, but how far does that go? Should the autistic kid be allowed into a scenario where he can and probably will hurt somebody simply because he's handicapped?

He's over 6 feet tall and 255 pounds. That's what some may refer to as an individual with retard strength. Autistic people can be very dangerous if they tantrum. My mom talks online with the mother of another autistic giant in Barbados, and he causes the poor woman nothing but grief. He can seriously hurt someone without necessarily wanting to. If the church is concerned about the safety of their parishioners, I back their decision fully.

Autism is not any simple condition.

Well yes, because that is the case. Autism comes in different "levels". But it doesn't matter if it's bad or worse it's still always hard if not impossible for the parents or anyone else to 'control'. It's a long process to try and make the condition as 'mild' as possible and there is no guarantee of succes.

So yeah, give him a break.

So, the boy has been going there for years.

At a younger age, when he was "easier" to restrain, the "he's autistic, give him a break" line was probably observed, without hesitation or complaint by the other attendees.

However, he's been getting progressively worse (as I understand it from the article) and the Church tried accommodating the family the best way they could, and the offers were refused. To me, that's a sign of the parents being in denial of what their son is growing up to be, dangerous, and that's entirely the fault of the parent's, either from fatigue, lack of education, or a lack of discipline/redirection/whatever.

If I was in charge of the church I would be more than willing, even happy, to have the order dropped, so long as the family followed whatever accommodations were offered. If they still refused, I would keep the order up unless they could find another church that would allow the displayed behavior.

This reminds me of an anecdote from my aunt (she works in a small private school for developmental and autistic children) where she had her arm broken by a 112 lb autistic kid. Who knows what could've happened if the kid was larger. He thought he was just playing. She's incredibly understanding of the condition but when that happened she refused to work another day there as long as that kid was still allowed to go to said school.

Theres a fine line between acceptance of a disability and safety of others. People seem to forget that line. So I'm going to have to agree with the Priest's decision in regards to Adam.

When the safety of the many is compromised for the sake of one then things have gotten out of hand.

I can't really see what there's left to discuss here. Both parties seem to have reacted in a reasonable manner. The priest wouldn't have pursued a restraining order had he not felt it necessary. "(The petition was filed)as a last resort out of a growing concern for the safety of parishioners and other community members due to disruptive and violent behavior on the part of that child." The kid was making it impossible to conduct an orderly or pleasant syndrome and the Parish was left with very little recourse.

It's sad that the kid is autistic and probably can't operate in society at all. But there's a point where you cant really make allowances anymore. In this case, when the kid started forcing himself on girls attending Mass. But insofar as I can see, there isn't really an issue of disability rights here.

With something like this a lot ultimately depends on factors you're not going to fit into a news narrative. The priest characterizes the boy's actions as more violent, the parents as much less so, and short of living in this town and observing the kid firsthand you're not gonna ever actually know which one is the case. For that matter the article mentions that 'other accomodations were offered' but doesn't say what they were so maybe they were terrible options that were basically abusive of the kid? Or maybe they were in fact entirely reasonable solutions which the unreasonable parents rejected due to being unwilling to entertain any such suggestion.

This is the problem with these essentially local stories being reported on by the national news; outside of the maybe couple of hundred people with any kind of firsthand experience of this situation it's not useful to know about nor is it even particularly possible to develop any kind of actually informed opinion.

Except disability rights seem to disagree.

Even in these few posts we have slightly differing opinions (Re: Osterbaum), and I'm pretty sure you can't proclaim everybody's in agreement after only five posts. When there's nothing left to discuss people will stop discussing.

Up until what point? Until he actually injures somebody? There has to be a line, for the protection of others. Yeah he's disables, but his rights still stop when the rights of the rest of the parish begins.

De-faithifying this comment as much as possible - we're discussing a group of people specifically committed to a particular ethical standard and how they choose to operate a place of gathering they've established for teaching that ethical standard, so I'm not really sure that a strictly secular definition of legal right and wrong is the standard by which to judge this. The kid legitimately can't help what he's doing and he hasn't caused serious harm to anybody so it's at least arguable that by their own standards these people are obligated to be tolerant of his behavior.

Yes and no.

I can be tolerant of him being a distraction. Incontinence, fine. Making noises, fine. He is, mentally, still a baby, so tolerating anything any other baby does is not outside the realm of acceptability.

Unfortunately for others, he's a baby in a big body. Only 13 at 6' and 255lbs and doesn't know how to, or that he should, restrain himself. That becomes a liability. He knocks others over. Picks others up and forces them to sit in his lap. Runs wild into others vehicles, starts them, then revs them up. While he hasn't caused any serious injuries yet, I would rather be proactive in the face of a seemingly inevitable situation instead of reactive should an injury actually occur.

I agree with you(Fifth) that there is too little information present to make a completely informed decision, but, for me, there is enough to warrant, at the least, cautionary actions. If the offered accommodations were outside of the family's acceptability, why would they continue their attendance? I would hope that they were reasonable, and while the parent's acknowledged the offers, refused because they couldn't or wouldn't see the danger their son was potentially causing.