This
is not the first time – it never is
[CW/TW:
confinement, imprisonment, abuse, murder of disabled people below and at links]
This incident in Georgia is not the first time disabled children have been imprisoned in cages in our lovely US of A, by the way. It is in fact rather distressing to think about, but here it is in a California school, a home in Toledo, Ohio. Also in Michigan. The two Rockville, MD twins locked in a basement. And worldwide, in Australia and Greece and elsewhere.
This incident in Georgia is not the first time disabled children have been imprisoned in cages in our lovely US of A, by the way. It is in fact rather distressing to think about, but here it is in a California school, a home in Toledo, Ohio. Also in Michigan. The two Rockville, MD twins locked in a basement. And worldwide, in Australia and Greece and elsewhere.
I
think it's time for people to
think about this. That when a disabled person is abused in some
fashion, my reaction is of course horror. But my reaction also is
“this is not the first time this has happened.” There are
constant patterns of abuse of disabled people. I know someone
(disabled) who at age six was locked in the freezing basement of
their school for hours. We, the disabled, get locked in basements and
cages, more often than you may think.
That
scratches the surface of the various abuses;
it does not cover the whole iceberg. But I will tell you something
that I hope is obvious…. If you're not one of the people who reacts
like I do, with knowing that the type of abuse has happened before:
Members of society actively abuse disabled people. Others turn a
blind eye. Sometimes
it takes the disabled person, like Melissa Stoddard, dying for anyone to act
on the knowledge that they
had been abused. Members
of society also actively excuse our deaths
And
most of the time, disabled people are not respected in death. Jillian
McCabe threw her six-year-old son, London McCabe, off a bridge in
November 2014.
An
NBC article titled “Jillian McCabe was ‘Overwhelmed’ Before
Autistic Son’s Fatal Plunge,” came out, discussing the burdens
she was facing. It makes no mention in the headline that she threw
him off the bridge to kill him. It justifies her reaction to his 2011
diagnosis of autism. The article goes on to quote a psychologist, Dee
Shepherd-Look,
“a professor at California State University, Northridge, as
saying, “quite frankly, I am surprised this doesn’t happen more
often. These children are really unable to be in a reciprocal
relationship and the moms don’t really experience the love that
comes back from a child — the bonding is mitigated… That is one
of the most difficult things for mothers,” followed by saying
autistic children can be “rigid and oppositional.”1
Does
that go into the iceberg a little for you?
