21yr old autistic son being taken advantage of by girl he thinks he is in love with .

ok so this a long complicated story so here is a little back ground info 

i am his mum , carer and appointee looking after his money - i pay all his bills allocate money for food savings etc and then he is given spending money of what is left 

i believe he has PDA - pathological demand avoidance but its not on his diagnosis just autism 

he has been smoking cannabis for a few years -  he wont have any medication from a doctor he uses the cannabis to self medicate  and the act of rolling etc fulfils his need to fiddle , to obsessively do the same things etc 

helped my son find his own flat when he was 19 because he beat me too many times to let him stay at home, i was calling the police for help 3 times a day at the worst period 

when he moved into his flat i was there everyday ,helping with everything and he settled in fine created his bubble and was happy ,

as a result of the cannabis use he associates with some unsavoury people and has a very skewed idea of friendship ,he sees them as friends because they gave him cannabis , because they make themselves available to him whenever because they are drug dealers and he has money but my son doesnt see this , he sees someone going out of his way for him and therefore this guy is a friend ,and so it goes on with others as well

through his associations with unsavoury people he met a young girl , she was younger than him and from a rough family and soon learnt that he would offer to buy her things like food etc or cigarettes if she told him she didnt have money , long story short , she soon realised if she told him a sob story she could manipulate him to do pretty much anything , because he thought he could help her or he wanted to help her , he was always the one getting help it made him feel useful to help someone else , and he was developing feelings for her

this has gone one for sometime , he has become unreasonable protective of her to the extent that i dont feel safe being at his right now because he will attack me if he thinks i am not happy with her, 

she has become very good at total manipulation and she has done well

so far she has managed to get 

free housing -no rent he pays it

free food - he buys it

free gas ,electric, water -he pays it 

free clothes, hair cuts, make up etc because she tells him she needs them and doesnt have the money and gets sad so he wants to help and so gives her money etc 

and off course there is the free drugs he buys cannabis for himself but she is smoking loads now so he is put in a position why he is asking for more money and then he fights with me ,and so on and so on ,

when he wasnt with her he did some cannabis but he had a specific amount he would buy and smoke to keep himself feeling ok and it allowed him to continue to live a fulfilling life but now he has no interests of his own because he has to be with her all the time because she will tell him she doesnt like to be on her own ,

anyway i could go on and on for hours ,what i wanted to ask was what can i do ? he needs help , she needs to be removed from him because he is not happy but he feels like he has to stay in the situation because she loves him and he is all she has .

i have spoken to the police and they say they cannot do anything so i wondered if anyone had any ideas ,

she is destroying his life and he cannot see it 

thank you in advance for your help Slight smile

  • so i have looked for help everywhere i can and am drawing a blank every time ,

    yes they all agree its bad but no can do anything unless my son is willing to contact them or back up what we are saying 

    and since he is not really aware of how manipulative this girl is being and he thinks he loves her and she loves him then there is zero chance of that happening ,

    and when ive tried explaining that he doesnt understand ,explain that this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened to him because he is desperate to feel usefull to make a difference , and it is very easy to work this out , for anyone one the outside its easy to see he is desperate to fee like he has a purpose and to be needed 

    she saw it immediately

    but since i messaged here the first time things have continued to go down hill,

    i am considering look at anything legal that can be done even though i dont have any money i have to do something 

    this girl has now brought in the help of her mother , a mother she left because it was not a good living condition ,one thing she used to gain my sons hel in the first place , "my mums mean i need you to look after me " sort of thing , but they seem to have patched up things and suddenly her mum is sitting my son down and talking to him about his benefits and telling him i am controlling him and that as his girlfriends mum she could be his appointee and she would give him so much more money etc ,

    and what the girl always telling him we dont love him ,we just want to control him , it is becoming almost impossible to help him , i dont know what to do or where to turn 

    we spoke to social services, the vulnerable adults team ,  the police , the mencap people etc etc all of which basically said he has to ask them for help , that we just have to wait and hoe she gets bored when she cannot get his money , but that doesnt hel with his mental health , we had to call the police again because he is loosing it , he is in crisis almost all of the time because she is constantly making him question if we love him , what are we doing ,etc etc , he doesnt know if he is coming or going 

  • Let me know how it goes Slight smile

  • Thank you i will do my research , thanks for your help .

  • Hey! Hazel I’ve good some good information for you. Please search Mate Crime it’s a Disability Hate Crime which is the police do know about and can arrest individuals involved. It’s all safeguarding because everything you’ve said shows clears exploitation of your sons learning disability from his girlfriend. Please do your research and proceed to protect your son!!  There’s so many types of mate crime which can go from financial to sexual exploitation. Many police forces many not be educated well on it but they do know about it. 

    good luck :) 

    sam

  • Hi thanks for your reply ,

    we tried to go down the sheltered housing route but kept hitting the same issues , he was too aggressive to be able to house with people who were vulnerable and he was too vulnerable to be housed in with  those with behavioural issues , etc etc we went round and round , 

    he was housed initially in a sort of teen home kind of place but all that did was introduce him to the cannabis and he didnt feel like he was safe there and soon lost his temper and threatened the staff with a knife and the police were called and he had to leave ,i was simply told  they didnt have anywhere suitable and since the council had housed him in the teen home and he had been kicked out they no longer had a need to house him , we found him the flat privately and he has had it for 2 years now ,he loves having his things around him , 

    the living alone is not the issue its the being taken advantage of , which i know would be solved if he lived at home so to speak but i still have a younger child at home and since i have spent over 2 yrs going through operations to sort out my wrist and arm he broke in several places and still have a huge lump on my face where he knocked my jaw out of alignment ,

    believe me i thought about letting my youngest go live with his older brother so i could have my autistic son at home with me , but i knew he would end up killing me soon and to be honest i was scared , so no he cant come home and now he has had his own space i dont think he would want to anyway ,

    he refuses to acknowledge his autism ,he just wants to be normal and he sort of allows the girls behaviour because it makes him feel normal , to him normal 21yr old boys have girlfriends and thats what girls do they are sneaky little cows who constantly want want want from there boyfriends , because the only view of teenagers etc he has had like that were at the council teen home and they were all very poorly adjusted kids with serious mental health issues and many with major drug use issues .

    his view of life in general is so skewed  and because of his PDA it doesnt matter how much you try to talk about it he just sees it as us trying to control his life and fights it .

    it is so very very hard , watching what she is doing

    i am so lost for what to do , i have researched taking out restraining orders on behalf of my son but cant seem to find anything that will work here and ive spoken to the police like i said , i dont know what to do .

  • I've read this a few times and I'm drawing a blank.

    He obviously can't come home because he has behaviour that challenges and it got too much for home. I want to say that he's too vulnerable to live alone based on what you've written here. So all that's left really is adult social services but I'm not sure what they would do?

    They won't prevent his girlfriend from staying, they would possibly refer him to smoking cessation but he doesn't sound like he'd engage? 

    The ideal would be to have him in a set up like a sheltered housing for people who have autism and other related disabilities but it would be a battle to get him placed and he might not want to go. Has he been assessed to see if he has the capacity to make his own decisions?