California Legislation on Reporting Abuse

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

People with disabilities are victims of violent crime three times as often as people without disabilities. The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report separately on autistic victims, but it does note that the victimization rate is especially high among those whose disabilities are cognitive. A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers. Autistic respondents were more than twice as likely to say that had been the victim of rape and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact.

Children w/ #autism are at higher risk of abuse than their peers. My bill, #AB189, requiring autism service providers to report suspected child abuse passed out of the Committee on Public Safety unopposed and is moving on in the CA Legislaturehttps://t.co/QhusO1Jsok

— Sydney Kamlager-Dove (@AsmKamlagerDove) February 27, 2019

Bill Digest:

AB 189, as introduced, Kamlager-Dove. Child abuse or neglect: mandated reporters: autism service personnel. Existing law, the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, requires a mandated reporter, as defined, to report whenever he or she, in his or her professional capacity or within the scope of his or her employment, has knowledge of or observed a child whom the mandated reporter knows or reasonably suspects has been the victim of child abuse or neglect. Failure by a mandated reporter to report an incident of known or reasonably suspected child abuse or neglect is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 6 months of confinement in a county jail, by a fine of $1,000, or by both that imprisonment and fine. This bill would add qualified autism service providers, qualified autism service professionals, and qualified autism service paraprofessionals, as defined, to the list of individuals who are mandated reporters. By imposing the reporting requirements on a new class of persons, for whom failure to report specified conduct is a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.

The LA Sentinel reports:

 Licensed providers (Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Board of Behavioral Sciences licensees etc.) already are mandated reporters. However, Board Certified Behavior Analysts, Analysts, Behavior Analysts and Behavior Management Assistants are not licensed in CA and thus don’t have a reporting requirement.

Reported Abuse of Autistic Children

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

People with disabilities are victims of violent crime three times as often as people without disabilities. The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report separately on autistic victims, but it does note that the victimization rate is especially high among those whose disabilities are cognitive. A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers. Autistic respondents were more than twice as likely to say that had been the victim of rape and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact.

A release from Vanderbilt University Medical Center:

A recent study by Vanderbilt researchers of 11 counties in Middle Tennessee revealed that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were nearly 2.5 times more likely than children without ASD to be reported to the Child Abuse Hotline by the age of 8.

The study, led by researchers from Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD), examined the entire population of Middle Tennessee residents born in 2008 and compared their records through 2016. Using data collected through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, 387 children out of the population of 24,306 were identified as having a diagnosis of ASD.

More than 17 percent of those identified with ASD had been reported to the Child Abuse Hotline by 2016, compared to 7.4 percent of children without ASD. Additionally, females with ASD were six times more likely to have substantiated allegations of maltreatment than males with ASD.Zachary Warren, PhD

...

According to Warren, children with ASD may be particularly vulnerable to maltreatment due to a variety of factors, including the presence of challenging behavior and complex cognitive and language impairments, increased caregiver stress, lower levels of family social support and higher rates of caregiver isolation and dependence.

Children with autism are also more likely to regularly work with a team of providers who may be paying closer attention than they would to children without ASD, though data from this study can’t confirm or deny these hypotheses.

“

Bannon Advocates Physical Abuse

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential campaigns.   In this campaign, a number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.  He also has a bad record on disability issues more generally.

The appointment of Steve Bannon as senior White House counselor does not bode well for the disability community.

Last month, Jonathan Swan reported at The Hill:

In December 2015, weeks after Ryan became Speaker, Bannon wrote in an internal Breitbart email obtained by The Hill that the “long game” for his news site was for Ryan to be “gone” by the spring.

In the Dec. 1 email, Breitbart’s Washington editor, Matt Boyle, suggested to Bannon via email that a story promoting Ryan’s planned overhaul of the mental health system would be a good way to “open a bridge” to Ryan.

Bannon wasn’t keen on the idea.

“I’ve got a cure for mental health issue,” Bannon wrote to Boyle. “Spank your children more.”

Bannon's Breitbart News Service often quotes Michael Savage.  In 2008,  The New York Times reported:

Michael Savage, the incendiary radio host who last week characterized nearly every child with autism as “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out,” said in a telephone interview on Monday that he stood by his remarks and had no intention of apologizing to those advocates and parents who have called for his firing over the matter.

From another Breitbart writer:

Time for some honesty. Women are — and you won’t hear this anywhere else — screwing up the internet for men by invading every space we have online and ruining it with attention-seeking and a needy, demanding, touchy-feely form of modern feminism that quickly comes into conflict with men’s natural tendency to be boisterous, confrontational and delightfully autistic. 

Ari Ne'eman writes:

I wish I could say I was surprised.

This is the same Steve Bannon known for spreading racist, misogynist and anti-semitic faux-news across the internet. The same Steve Bannon who faced domestic violence charges after law enforcement found red marks on the neck of his wife while responding to a “domestic disturbance.” The same Steve Bannon whose ex-wife reported that he didn’t want his daughters “going to school with Jews.”

Of course we should know by now that people with disabilities won’t be exempt from this hate. When racism, anti-semitism and misogyny rear their ugly heads, ableism is never far behind. And so we have to be ready.

Abuse of the Disabled

A Thursday release from the Disability and Abuse Project:

The Disability and Abuse Project today released a report that gives low grades to state and local agencies for failing to respond adequately to widespread abuse of children and adults with disabilities.

The Report -- "Abuse of People with Disabilities: Victims and Their Families Speak Out" -- analyzes the results of what may be the largest survey of its kind in the nation. More than 7,200 people took the survey which inquired into the experiences of people with disabilities as victims of abuse and bullying. Family members, advocates, service providers and various types of professionals also responded.

Over 70% of people with disabilities said they had been victims of abuse. More than 50% of these victims had experienced physical abuse, with some 41% having been victims of sexual abuse. Nearly 9 of 10 respondents with disabilities had suffered verbal or emotional abuse. Most victims said they had experienced abuse on more than 20 occasions.

Some autism-specific findings:

• Some disability types had a higher incidence of abuse than others. For example, 74.8% of people with mental health conditions reported they had been victims of abuse, while 67.1% of those with a speech disability, 66.5% of those with autism, 62.5% of those with an intellectual or developmental disability, and 55.2% of those with a mobility disability reported having experienced such abuse.
• The rate of sexual abuse varied greatly among victims depending on the type of disabilities they had. Some 47.4% of people with mental health conditions reported they had been victims of sexual abuse, whereas 34.2% of those with intellectual or developmental disabilities, 31.6% of those with a mobility disability, and 24.9% of those with autism reported they had experienced sexual abuse.
• The rate of victimization reported by various disability communities (defined as people with disabilities or pwd and families) was rather consistent, with the following victim types reporting they had been abused 10 or more times: mental health (59.4%), mobility (45.7%), autism (44.3%), speech (43.8%), and I/DD (39.9%).
• The rate of reporting varied among specific “disability communities” (pwd and families). Some 55.4% of victims with autism reported abuse, while 52.8% of those with a speech disability, 44.2% of those with a mental health condition, and 39.5% of those with a mobility disability did so.
• People with autism and people with mental health conditions were victims of bullying at a significantly higher rate than people with other types of disabilities. The following are the rates of bullying reported by various disability communities (pwd and families): autism (77%), mental health (74.7%), speech (66.8%), I/DD (64.3%), and mobility (55%).

A Choking Incident

The Miami Herald reports:

After a 13-year-old autistic child wet his pants while riding on a Broward school bus, the bus attendant — whose job is to assist special-needs students — responded by choking the boy.

The incident, which lasted roughly 45 minutes, was captured by the school bus surveillance camera. Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies this week arrested bus attendant Darryl Blue, 48, on one count of aggravated child abuse. The bus driver who nonchalantly continued on her route, even as the boy screamed in pain, had not been charged Friday.

Neither Blue nor the bus driver have been fired by the school district, though both have been reassigned to “a position away from students,” said Broward school district spokeswoman Marsy Smith. The district is conducting an internal investigation before taking further action.
Blue has worked for the district on and off since 2000, while the driver is a recent hire still in the probationary phase of her employment.

BSO released the surveillance video Friday afternoon.

Unfortunately, there have been similar cases, which is why parents of special-needs kids support video surveillance.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/09/3089706/video-school-bus-worker-chokes.html#storylink=cpy

Autism and Abuse

KTLA in Los Angeles reports:

Police are looking for additional victims after a man employed as an in-home caregiver was arrested for allegedly molesting an autistic child.

Jeremy Shawn Stockton is charged with multiple counts of lewd acts against a child under the age of 14.

Stockton was arrested after the boy came forward with details of the alleged molestation.

The 29-year-old is an employee of Wellspring, a local agency that specializes in behavioral intervention for young children with autism.

Since May 2008, Stockton has worked for Wellspring as an in-home caregiver for developmentally disabled children, according to the LAPD.

He has also been a special education trainee at Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys.

Although not a YMCA employee, in 2009, he worked among developmentally disabled children at the YMCA facility in La Canada.

In Florida, The Sun-Sentinel reports:

The boy was autistic, severely limited in his ability to speak and interact.

The teacher's aide assigned to him said she was in fear one day when he began acting aggressively, a behavior not uncommon in children with autism.

But the boy's parents say the aide was the aggressive one, picking up a chair, acting like a lion tamer as the boy cowered in fear. Finally, the parents say, the aide threw the chair at the boy, striking him in the legs.

The case highlights the challenges faced by those who care for some of the most vulnerable students in public schools. An attorney for then-teacher's aide Talia Sabo said she was acting in self-defense against the teenager, who was a student at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek at the time of the May 2008 incident.

"He was being very aggressive," said the lawyer, Maidenly Macaluso. She said the chair fell out of Sabo's hand and was not thrown.

More than 3,000 children diagnosed with some form of autism are enrolled in Broward's public schools. In Palm Beach, the figure is 1,850. Those who are high-functioning display symptoms that might go unnoticed by a casual observer. Low-functioning students struggle with basic communication and socialization skills.

...

The lawsuit was settled last year, with the school district agreeing to pay $25,000. But a guardian ad-litem for the boy determined in December that the settlement, which included attorney's fees, was not in the boy's best interest.

"I think $25,000 is far too low" to compensate the boy for what he allegedly suffered, said the guardian, Matthew Scott, in a federal court filing.

The case was reopened and is pending in federal court. School officials declined to discuss an open case.