Abuse of people with disabilities

[Non Stop Dancer]

Did anyone see the show on the BBC last night about this? It's up there with one of the most upsetting things I've ever seen, and made we want to bring back the birch for anyone perpetrating what ranged from insensitive comments to outright physical assault and protracted harassment to the point where a wheelchair user was forced to flee her own home by a baying mob. Just made me absolutely dispair for humankind if people like that walk among us. Scum; sub-human scum.

[El Unicornio, mang]

One of the things that makes me hate this country sometimes. When I was in the US, the respect and help I saw given to disabled people by strangers on the regular was admirable (or rather, how it should be). The treatment they get here goes hand in hand with the kind of snide, piss-taking, abusing strangers mentality which seems to be part of British "culture". "Just having a laugh, mate" "just banter, mate". Fuck off.

My sister is disabled and had to put up with abuse at school until my Mum (who is usually very docile and non-threatening) marched into her classroom one day and basically threatened the girls who were giving her shit in front of everyone.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Going to school in the 70's and 80's I remember the kind of pisstaking people would do regarding people with disabilities.  I think part of that was maybe borne out of ignorance, and possibly even fear.  At school they never taught us a single thing about disability, not a damn sausage.  I think the situation would be better if schools taught about disability, in biology lessons they should teach about how and why it happens, demystify it.  Do schools nowadays teach anything about disability or is it still as bad as it was when I went to school?

[jobotic]

The Daily Mail have done a piece on this programme, about how awful the abuse is.

Comments are moderated.

"I mean I know, not all of them, some are genuine, but most are just after benefits aren't they?"

[Shit Good Nose]

Jockice has a few tales (which he may or may not want to share again) that will turn your blood cold and/or boil your piss.


I think there is better understanding (I'm not going to say "acceptance" or "tolerance" because it's not something that should need to be accepted or tolerated of course) now with the younger generations - little Nose(she's 10)'s school has always been very right-on with inclusivity from reception year, as are other schools in the area, and I've heard the same from friends with kids of a similar age.  But it does only seem to be a VERY recent change of step in the right direction.

Alas I'm of a generation whose first experience of this was Joey Deacon on Blue Peter (and I'd be lying if I said I didn't throw the term around when I was a kid [28 I was, etc]).  Their heart was in the right place, but, from memory, how they handled it was a bit of a trainwreck and the relative short shrift Joey and his disabilities were given in the program's running time basically boiled it down to "look - this man is generically disabled".  Whereas now schools spend a LOT of time explaining things like this (as well as race, gender, sexuality etc etc) to make sure it doesn't happen (or, rather, to make sure it doesn't happen as often - I'm sure it'll never be fully eradicated).

I suppose we can at least say we're not as bad as China for this sort of thing.

[bgmnts]

Their fault for being disabled really isn't it?

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I don't think school kids belm anymore, so surely that's a step in the right direction.

[Non Stop Dancer]

I can understand it (not condone it) more coming from children and teenagers (verbal bullying, at least). It's the fact that it's fully grown adults who seem to be meting out the worst of it. It's completely unforgivable. Most of us probably have our empathy blind-spots, but to see a middle aged woman with dwarfism and have an instinct to kick her in the face, as described last night? Just euthanise those cunts, please.

[Non Stop Dancer]

Their fault for being disabled really isn't it?

That seems to be pretty much the unironic justification in most cases.

[BlodwynPig]

Their fault for being disabled really isn't it?

God considers rewrite.

[Fambo Number Mive]

There seems to be a lack of campaigning about disability hate crime on the left - we complain about the BBC but I don't see much of a focus on this on activist media. There is (rightly) focus on how the government treats disabled people but not about the way disabled people are treated in their own communities.

There seems to be a lack of solidarity with disabled people on this topic while the tabloids try and stir up hate against disabled people by focusing on "benefit cheats" and talking nonsense about disability benefits.

Also, how many of those who carry out disabled hate crime get properly punished? Where is the deterrent? Look at the crap sentences the abusers at Winterbourne View got, for example: https://www.itv.com/news/2012-10-26/six-care-workers-caught-abusing-patients-jailed

The documentary is very harrowing and may trigger, but watch it and then tell me that you think they got enough of a punishment. Yet they are out now and enjoying lift while their very vulnerable victims are probably still very traumatised after being tortured. If a BBC reporter hadn't gone undercover, it would still be going on. Will The Canary or other leftwing media journalists go undercover to help expose disabled hate crime like Winterbourne View or at the Solar Centre in Doncaster: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-22904632

It makes me so angry that communities who target the most vulnerable for abuse get away with it. There needs to be a left strategy to tackle disabled hate crime, at the moment all they can do is ring the police and hope something gets done (and often it isn't as previous cases will show).

Look at Fiona Pilkington and how her life and that of her child ended in tragedy because of the vile abuse from the community. It's a harrowing case, but everyone should read about it because how she was failed. It's part of the rotten culture of this country where people who pick on those much weaker than them get away with it, and it's only going to get worse under this brutal government which does nothing for disabled people and the rotten opposition. This should be a national scandal but all we get is the odd piece in Private Eye and the odd documentary on the BBC.

[Fambo Number Mive]

You can see the documentary here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rh4p/targeted-the-truth-about-disability-hate-crime

Perhaps if we all shared this documentary on social media it might help to educate some people.

[garbed_attic]

Have you done anything with or donated to Disabled People Against Cuts before, Fambo? They might be a good group to put some of your energies into :)

[Fambo Number Mive]

Yes DPAC are a good shout, I've donated to them in the past to support their campaigns against austerity and cuts affecting disabled people. Do they focus much on hate crime though? I can see they have a section on it but it seems to be quite old.

Can't see an Oxfordshire group but there's one in Berkshire.

[Pink Gregory]

Still shocks me how some people are still comfortable with using the word 'retarded'. Can confirm it received heavy usage in my teens, I should have known better.  But anyone who still uses it now seems yo make a point of still doing it, but to what end?

[garbed_attic]

I've seen that focus more on DPAC's social media than when I attended one of their marches/protests (which ended up with us - including a lot of folks with mobility impairments - on a tram line stopping the tram... it was pretty terrifying but awesome. I definitely think they would be a good group to exchange ideas with rather than trying to build something up from scratch.

(One of the things that has often frustrated me about Extinction Rebellion is the desire to be the vanguard "movement of movement" and be very dismissive or even kinda sneary about Greenpeace at al.)

[sirhenry]

The 7 years that my (autistic) son was in mainstream school were the worst years of my life. Trying to convince him every evening that things would get better and that he shouldn't try to kill himself was soul-destroying. And all because of the bullying he was getting from both staff and students at 3 different schools. He was excluded 3 times for retaliating when being beaten up (the perpetrators got a stern talking to apparently; it didn't even slow them down). It finally came to a head when his PA told the school that if they didn't do something about it she would sue them for damages - it turned out that she had been getting between my son and his attackers ('bully' doesn't have the right connotations for serious sociopaths like this) and was getting seriously assaulted in the process. During the six weeks that they took to decide what to do about it my son had a meltdown after another incident. They called us to come and take him home and in the meantime they locked him in an office "for his own safety". It was really hard not to grin when they unlocked the door and we saw that it was the office where they kept all their paperwork - which was now strewn across the room, reams and reams of the stuff. And having broken the law in locking him in there, they couldn't even complain.

He then went to the only place in the whole of Yorkshire that could help kids with high intelligence and severe social problems, our local Hospital and Home School Centre. It was designed to be fore kid with long-term illnesses who were house-bound or in hospital long-term, but had ended up taking in a much wider range of children with mental health problems because no-one else would.
They were wonderful; and with their help he got his A-levels and went to the local university.

Who fucked him over royally. The course was a disaster - one day each week the students had to phone in at 8am to find out if they had a lecture that day or the next and what time (often 9am that day), they never got a reading list and so on. It was so bad that the next year all the Physics dept. organisation was done by a different department to stop students quitting the course.
He took his exams separately - once in a room looking onto a building that was demolished as he sat the exam, twice in rooms where the lights switched off every five minutes and only came back on if he stood up and waved his arms around. And...and...and... there were so many things that they did to make his life harder and we complained so often that they kicked him out. Unfortunately one of his tutors made the mistake of telling us in an email that they knew what they were doing was illegal but it was so much easier and cheaper to do so. So we won the tribunal and he was awarded £30K damages. Which went through the solicitor. I say 'through', but it never came out the other side and the solicitor left the country soon after, taking it with him.

So yes, ignoring all the abuse that's shouted at him and people (well, all young men really) spitting at him when we went for walks together was easy compared to the years and years of institutional abuse. Though the one young woman who yelled "I love you!" at him from the back of a passing car was... peculiar.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Really sorry to hear that. It's bad enough when it's the students, but the staff as well, that's a whole new level of awful.

[QDRPHNC]

I can't imagine going through that with your child, sounds like a nightmare. I hope things have improved.

[Shit Good Nose]

Really sorry to hear that. It's bad enough when it's the students, but the staff as well, that's a whole new level of awful.

A big part of the problem is that even many people who are professional caregivers for people with disabilities think that autism is one thing - "oh, they're just Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man - they just need a bit of hand holding, but are otherwise fine and brill with numbers" - and that they can apply the knowledge and skills they have from caring for, I dunno, someone with spina bifida, but, as sirhenry no doubt knows, autism covers such a wide spectrum (both literally and metaphorically) that even two people with the same particular type of autism will have very very different capabilities and anxiety triggers.  I've worked with several autistic people over the years, right from the "you wouldn't even know he was autistic" type who is 99+% self-sufficient and not at all socially awkward, right through to someone who needs almost constant care and attention and is unable to look a member of their own family in the eye when they talk to them.  I currently work with a lad (well, he's 26/27 now) who gets terrible anxieties in most social situations, but he purposely puts himself in those situations AND makes them even more difficult because they help him cope and combat his autism (he always used to sing - solo - a christmas carol at our office parties, which would typically be attended by close to 100 staff, despite the fact by his own admission he has a dreadful singing voice, but it was a massive deal for him and it helped him cope in "normal" every day life).  The most difficult one was a chap who was fine when it came to social interaction, at least in the sense that he wasn't shy or awkward or anything, but he took EVERYTHING that was said to him literally, so you had to be very very careful about what you said and how you said it.  I used the term "kill two birds with one stone" in conversation with him once - I knew he was autistic, but I didn't at that point know how his autism manifested itself.  He took me deadly seriously and asked if we had specific stones for the task, what type of birds we were going to be killing and how many attempts we had.  All that BEFORE he asked why we were doing it.

sirhenry's experience makes for depressing reading indeed.

[Kankurette]

I wish more people on the left did care about disability and I'm not talking about the obnoxious language policing and acting like 'stupid' is on a par with the n-word. Disability hate crime has gone up. I've read some real horror stories about autistic people being bullied or tortured or murdered, and I'm a mild case myself but it still upsets me. And the way the DWP treats disabled people is horrendously cruel. How can someone in a coma work? Or someone who's paralysed? Or has severe cerebral palsy?

I guess caring about the disabled is ~identity politics~ though.

Also, is it just me or do the alt right REALLY hate autistic people? The 4chan crowd do.

[Pink Gregory]

They're all fucking eugenicists, it tracks fairly well.  Anyone who they can hurt is a target.  Revolting people.

Sorry, that didn't add anything.

Just seems like an alarming number of people have an instinctive negative reaction when asked to be sensitive to someone's needs.

[Kankurette]

I do think a lot of internet trolls and alt right types would happily T4 the lot of us. A one-way trip to Hartheim Castle. Sadly it's not restricted to the right. The left can be awful about mental illness. If I lived in a communist society, I'd still be mentally ill and have chronic pain. It's not all down to capitalism.

I googled Fiona Pilkington and now I need to go and stare at a wall.

Sirhenry, I'm so sorry you and your son had to go through that.

[Zetetic]

I wish more people on the left did care about disability...

Usual reminder that Labour is fully opposed to privatisation of the health service except for people with severe and enduring mental illness or severe learning disabilities, who can be stuffed in US-owned for-profit hospitals with a well-documented history of abuse and neglect.

[Harry Badger]

I don't think school kids belm anymore, so surely that's a step in the right direction.

No, ThEy JuSt TyPe LiKe ThIs On SoCiAl MeDiA PlAtFoRmS (I think)

[sirhenry]

I can't imagine going through that with your child, sounds like a nightmare. I hope things have improved.

Thanks, and yes, he's doing much better these days. People pay him to playtest games and write about chilli sauces and occasionally give lectures to carers about his experiences at school and university. But mainly, he's happy, which is more than I ever expected a decade ago.

Adulthood seems to be a bit less horrible for most people on the spectrum in my experience.

SGN is right about carers seeing autism as a single 'Rain Man-like' thing, to the extent that most university autism support companies only give their staff a half day training to cover the entire spectrum. My son talked to one such group of trainees in the afternoon after their morning's training; I think the company thought he would give them a light-hearted view from the other side. His talks are entertaining, but the humour is really, really dark, especially about his university days. They didn't ask him to do it again - too many of the trainees demanded further training.

Kakurette - thanks.

[Shit Good Nose]

Glad that sirhenry jnr is in an infinitely better place now.  Plus I'm sure a few CaBbers are jealous - they'd love to test games and write about chilli sauces and get paid for it.

[Noodle Lizard]

Since we're all comedy fans, it might be worth thinking about how in British comedy there's a lot more emphasis on disability or "accidentally offending a disabled" being a kind of punchline. I'm not sure if Gervais is entirely to blame for that, but he's certainly the first I can remember - if anyone remotely physically unusual turned up in one of his shows, you'd know exactly what they were there for. Later, The Inbetweeners would do the same thing. Of course the defense is "we're making fun of people who treat disabled people badly, not the disabled people themselves", but it's a pretty thin line in some instances and implies that "we've all offended a spacker at some point, right?" as some kind of relatable observation. That almost definitely seeps into the culture, and as a result I think the UK has more derogatory terms for disabled people than any other English-speaking country (granted, the term "retarded" is still pretty common in the US, but not considered especially contentious because of how vaguely it's used).

I find Curb or even South Park's treatment of disability in comedy far more good-natured, anyway. It's not to say the US is completely without discrimination against the disabled, but it does appear to be something more or less everyone is sensitive towards (unless you're the former President - ZING).

[sirhenry]

Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory was blatantly autistic, but it was never said because, according to one of the writers, if they said he was autistic it would hugely limit what they would be allowed to have him do or say. Which is fairly standard fare in comedies - make fun of the symptoms while (theoretically) being blind to the disability.

It also allows them to change his behaviour without explanation if they want. In BBT he suddenly changed for one series (series 3?) in that he started to be actively spiteful and unpleasant to the others, whereas before his reactions were out of ignorance/innocence. His understanding of social interactions suddenly appeared fully-formed (at least when it was useful for a joke), removing autism as an explanation and removing any reason for sympathy for him.

[Noodle Lizard]

Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory was blatantly autistic, but it was never said because, according to one of the writers, if they said he was autistic it would hugely limit what they would be allowed to have him do or say. Which is fairly standard fare in comedies - make fun of the symptoms while (theoretically) being blind to the disability.

It also allows them to change his behaviour without explanation if they want. In BBT he suddenly changed for one series (series 3?) in that he started to be actively spiteful and unpleasant to the others, whereas before his reactions were out of ignorance/innocence. His understanding of social interactions suddenly appeared fully-formed (at least when it was useful for a joke), removing autism as an explanation and removing any reason for sympathy for him.

Yeah, I agree with that. BBT always straddled a weird line (some call it "blackface for nerds" etc.), but most sitcoms of that ilk are so unrealistic it becomes difficult to really see it as any commentary or reflection of people in real life, much less diagnose any character as having a mental disability - everyone's dialogue is so overwritten and stilted that it bears almost no resemblance to reality anyway. By the end of (Coffee) Friends, Joey would be considered severely mentally subnormal if taken seriously, and Phoebe has always been that way to an extent (not to mention Monica clearly having severely debilitating OCD). See also Kramer in Seinfeld, and probably countless others I can't think of right now (I don't watch many of those kinds of sitcoms).

When it becomes an issue, for me anyway, is when you introduce a character with either clear physical disabilities or telegraphed mental disabilities in a more or less "realistic setting" and decide to use them either purely as a punchline or just assuming their very presence is enough to get your laugh. That's something I've felt with Gervais's work, and a few of the imitators left in his wake. That kind of "Ooo, here's a mental!" thing.