Published on 12, July, 2020
The first report on the BBC news tonight was about the awful stabbing of the 15 year old Holly Newton and the mention that the killer had autism. But this is just inflammatory, is it not? They did exactly the same regarding the Southport killings (there's a separate thread about that in this forum). But it doesn't take much for an ill-informed public to make the leap that people who commit awful crimes are autistic. Or that autistic people are likely to commit such crimes. Yes of course a tiny percent of people with autism commit heinous crimes just as there are a tiny percent of neurotypicals who do too. But what is the reason for reporting that the boy was autistic? I wonder, would they mention that a killer was of a different race or gender or physically disabled so readily?
I think it's the defence using everything to try and mitigate the truly horrific nature of the crime. It gets lumped together with mental illness and a tough home life/upbringing.
It draws suspicion and scorn and is far from helpful, I suppose it's similar to people of a religion that are demonised even though 99.9% just want to live their lives in peace.