Kelli Stapleton was recently sentenced to 10 to 22 years in prison for child abuse, after attempting to kill her autistic teen daughter Issy. We spoke with lawyer Samantha Crane, who is the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network’s Director of Public Policy, about ASAN’s efforts on the Stapleton case: both in helping the prosecution send the message that disability does not justify murder, and in urging the court to ensure Issy saw the same justice as any other victim of felony child abuse. TPGA: How did ASAN get involved with the Stapleton case? SC: ASAN generally issues statements after individual incidents of violence that come to our attention, often statements concerning media coverage. But with the Stapleton case, since I’m a lawyer and I started at ASAN one month after the attempt on Issy’s life, we really wanted to see if we could influence the trajectory of the case, not just the…
Tag: Issy Stapleton
Jennifer Byde Myers jennyalice.com Just after the recent murder of Alex Spourdalakis, yet another parent has attempted to murder her autistic child. Services to help families are not available to the degree they are needed, often leaving parents of children with intense needs feeling abandoned, depressed, suicidal and, in some cases, homicidal. I just sincerely wish these conversations could be separate. They must remain separate. I know how it happens, how the conversations seem like they should go together. As parents of kids with intense needs, medical, mental or physical, we are each slogging through life, with easy days and hard days and harder days, until something really bad happens, then we are triggered to say to the world, “See, look how hard this is. Why doesn’t anyone care?” But the problem is that caregivers say this at the very same same time that someone was trying to kill their…
Beth Ryan www.loveexplosions.net So, as an administrator of Parenting Autistic Children with Love and Acceptance, I’ve seen a lot of questions from parents asking, “Where were you when Kelli Stapleton needed help with her daughter, Issy?” And, “Did you donate to Issy’s treatment?” These questions are asked of Autistic activists and parents of Autistic children who are outraged at the attempted murder of Issy by her own mother, Kelli. Those that have zero empathy for Kelli. Those that believe that parents that would murder their own disabled children are as accountable as parents that murder their own non-disabled children–and that the prosecution of these criminals should reflect that without exception. Oh no, you do not get to lay the blame of this massive tragedy at my feet or at those of Autistic activists. Let me start by telling you where I was. I was first, and foremost, taking care of my own…