Am I being unreasonable?

They know I have Autism.

stranger said:

The police did say something which has upset me - he has learning disabilities, which supposedly means he doesn't know right from wrong, therefore, his behaviour is ok. Except, it's not ok and he's not so low functioning that he doesn't understand that what he's doing is wrong.

He knows what he's doing and seems to be using his learning disabilities as an excuse.

Hi stranger,

That's very concerning. "Not knowing right from wrong" reminds me of the insanity defence; which is all very well in court, but I'm not sure it's really the business of the police to write off a genuine concern about stalking on that basis - much less accuse you of being in the wrong!

(Obviously I'm not a lawyer; please don't take anything I say here or elsewhere as legal advice!)

Maybe you could write to your local police commissioner, explaining the problem?

Alex R

Did you tell them you have AS which is also a disability?  You can tell them you have co-morbid mental health issues such as anxiety (if you do) and that his harrassment is affecting your mental health adversely.  You are the victim here.  Ask them if he had murdered someone, if he would still be liable for trial and punishment.

Thanks.

The police did say something which has upset me - he has learning disabilities, which supposedly means he doesn't know right from wrong, therefore, his behaviour is ok. Except, it's not ok and he's not so low functioning that he doesn't understand that what he's doing is wrong.

He knows what he's doing and seems to be using his learning disabilities as an excuse.

They also made me out to be the bad one, when I've not done anything wrong here.

Hi there,

Contacting the police was definitely the right thing to do; let's hope they and Facebook's abuse team are able to help.

Alex R

The police are now aware about what's going on. He's made yet another profile on Facebook and requested to be my friend. It seems as though he doesn't care how much this is affecting me. I really could do without this now.

I've really had enough. He was told a while back to either stop contacting me or I will get the police involved.

It might have been wise to inform him somewhere along the way (if you hadn't done so already) that he hadn't offended you (before it got to stalking phase) you just didn't want to choose to be his close friend, you just wanted to be an acquaintance.  If it wasn't spelled out to him he will have found it easier to misread and maybe thought he'd done something wrong to upset you, especially as he seems to have problems that way generally from what you said.  Sorry if you did spell it out to him early on, but your posts don't say.

As it went as far as it did, be on the lookout in case he still won't take no for an answer and hangs around and tries to bother you as you leave the group or follow you or something.  It might be an idea just to mention it to the police as a by-the-by in case he continues harrassing you in another way.  Hope that doesn't scare you but you need to be cautious.

Glad you are happy and it is resolved :-)

Lets hope he can now sort himself out and try to be happy too (without upestting other people).

He's now been kicked out from the group (others have complained about him) and can't contact me any more.

Not quite what I was expecting; but I am very happy now.

just ignore it - treat it as spam?

So, I received an email this morning. The group have their own website and within the website is a members only forum where you can request others to be your friend. He wants to be my friend, despite me telling him a few weeks ago that we can't be friends.

I think that it may be difficult to get him to understand. I really thing [edit:think] that having someone to mediate (AS experience and totally impartial) would be really helpful.

Thanks Jon.

I've had a response from a member of the branch committee. (the branch officer isn't too well; so this member is acting on her behalf) He's not happy either. He doesn't believe that my actions are unreasonable. He's told me to leave it with him and it will get sorted. He thinks that this person doesn't understand what "no" means. It's also clear that this person has issues; but it's not right that he takes his issues out on me.

He may need to speak to other people from NAS; but he's made it clear that my name won't be mentioned.

Next week is going to be difficult - we're hoping that branch meetins are returning to normal. No doubt he'll be there. But I know I can't ignore him forever.

Thank you. I have emailed the barnch officer to see what she says. Although, I did make it clear it's more of a "I am just informing you" than "please do something".

Hi - if the branch officer of the autism group does contact you then tell him you're being harrassed + don't want anything to do with this person.  Or you could contact the branch officer yourself (by email??) + put your case.

 As the other posters have said, you don't have to put up with this.  The info they've given should be helpful to you, even though I appreciate having to deal with all this is v stressful for you.  So, if you have to, then report this person to the police and/or another professional who can sort things out.  Good luck

Thanks for your reply. I've spoke to my dad who wasn't happy about this. Thankfully, he doesn't know where I live.

I have been advised to report him to Facebook. I had to unblock him to do this and can't block / report him for 48 hours, which is a right pain. Thankfully, he hasn't contacted me since.

You may not wish to go that far with this, but you do have legal rights if someone is pestering and harrassing you. It should be possible to look up the service on your local authority/police on their website. Harrassments can be recorded as an incident, and repeated incidents can be acted upon.

Things have got jumbled up a bit because the Government have forced a "hate crime" label onto the previous harrassment framework, so that may confuse the issue. You may have to look under disability hate crime for the harrassment procedure, even though its not hate crime.

You have a right to be able to live your life without someone stalking you, just because they think you can help them but you don't want to get involved. Particularly your own autism means you need to avoid that kind of stress. So you have disability rights here.

Also NAS should have some pages on this. It really is relevant to autism needs.