Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.Squidalicious.com “Stress is involved in almost every incident of serious child abuse, but it should not be seen as a mitigating factor more than any other source of stress should be seen as a mitigating factor. By and large, parents of people with disabilities are able to take care of their children without trying to kill them.” –Samantha Crane Whenever a news story breaks about a parent killing (or trying to murder) a disabled child, reactions to the story are almost as disturbing as the story itself — because media and blog accounts tend to empathize with the parents, not the child victims. In fact the children in these cases are almost universally depicted as trigger for their parents’ acts, rather than human beings with feelings, friends, interests, and rights. We need to change those conversations. Photo © Shannon Des Roches Rosa [image: white teen boy…
Tag: the autistic self-advocacy network
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…