March 1 marks an important and terrible day for the community: a day to mourn disabled persons who were murdered by their caregivers. As time has gone on, it has also grown for many to blame people with disabilities who were murdered, with their disability being a cause used to exonerate the perpetrator.
The story plays out similarly every time. A story is written detailing the murder. We are asked to be sympathetic to the person who committed the murder. The person with disabilities is the one at fault: they were high maintenance, they were low functioning, they were difficult, they didn’t respond as was expected. These reasons are offered by everyone—caretakers, family members, police officers. Too often, this excuse goes without any further questions. We never address the fact that a human being has been murdered. We don’t accept the blame for our society normalizing this and not providing any real support system if people with disabilities have issues or training for police officers and the caregivers interacting with them. Today, we mourn. We mourn for those lost, and we mourn for parts of ourselves we are giving away by not talking about it.
From The Nation:
In 2012, Elizabeth Hodgins shot and killed her 22-year-old son, George, in his childhood bedroom in Sunnyvale, Calif. She then turned the gun on herself. Although she murdered her own child, local news described Elizabeth Hodgins as a “devoted and loving mother.” George, on the other hand, was called “low functioning and high maintenance.” George was autistic, and article after article reinforced a single message: His disability made George somehow responsible for his own death. Another mother who knew the Hodgins family told the San Jose Mercury News: “We don’t know what caused this mother to do this. But every mother I know who has a child with special needs has a moment just like that.”
Zoe Gross remembers reading about the murder, and the whiplash she felt: “The pivot was really quick from ‘there’s been this crime and this tragedy’ to ‘caregivers of autistic adults face terrible burdens, and the mother was driven to this.’” Gross is the director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and is on the spectrum herself. “This isn’t how society reacts when there’s a murder-suicide and there isn’t a disabled person involved,” she told me.
Zoe is right. When these cases occur and it happens to a person with a disability their murder is lost in the shuffle. The mourning for the passage of their life is left out. It is though we reduce the value of their life, we dismiss their loss, and we take away a chance to mourn.
This same tactic has been used over and over on people with disabilities. Today is a day of mourning that marks the impact of murder within a family or caregivers, but as so many will tell you on Twitter and other social media formats, the dehumanization extends everywhere. Time looks at it with some scary details:
When people with disabilities or mental illness are not at the center of the conversation, activists say that makes it harder to build understanding and make change. Adrienne Bryant in Tempe, Ariz., says she witnessed the limits of police understanding this year. In January, she called the police because her 29-year-old son Randy Evans, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia last year, was experiencing a manic episode and she needed help getting him to a mental health facility. But when police showed up at her apartment with riot shields and rifles, she and her younger son panicked, the officers were yelling, and the situation quickly escalated.
“I said several times, ‘Please do not kill my son,’” Bryant recalled, near tears. “One wrong move and I could have lost two sons that night.”
Our society has a long way to go on recognizing and handling disabilities. We avoid talking about disabilities. We dehumanize their loss when those with disabilities pass. We excuse those who murder them.
For one day, people who live with a disability ask that we remember others who were murdered. Those who have passed deserve at least that.